


Revved Up, Fit to Break

by dorkilysoulless (custodian)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Sex, Auto Repair, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Daisy Chaining, Double Penetration, Drinking, F/M, Gay Bashing, Internalized Homophobia, Love Bites, M/M, Mark of Cain, Masturbation, Multi, Oral Sex, Phone Sex, Porn Video, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Series 9 AU, Stripping, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-18 07:28:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 51,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1419645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/custodian/pseuds/dorkilysoulless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has always been more interested in Castiel's sexual escapades than strictly necessary.  When Dean takes Cas out with the express intention of getting him laid, he gets more than he planned for: a confidante, a partner, and someone invested in keeping him human. </p><p>(Originally a one-off that grew into a S9 AU that runs parallel to canon.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Revved Up, Fit to Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The words are barely out of Dean’s mouth before Castiel’s face scrunches up in confusion. “Wingman? Dean, you haven’t got –“_
> 
> _“It’s an expression, Cas.” Dean waits a beat, like maybe he’ll figure it out, but no dice. “For a guy who helps his friend get laid? Come on, man. The last action you got tried to kill you. We gotta break that streak.”_

The words are barely out of Dean’s mouth before Castiel’s face scrunches up in confusion. “Wingman? Dean, you haven’t got –“ 

“It’s an expression, Cas.” Dean waits a beat, like maybe he’ll figure it out, but no dice. “For a guy who helps his friend get laid? Come on, man. The last action you got tried to kill you. We gotta break that streak.”

“April _did_ kill me, Dean.”

“Exactly,” he says as he palms his keys and shoulders into his jacket. “Which is why you’re not going out there again without some adult supervision.” 

“This is unnecessary.”

“Like hell it is,” Dean says, and heads up the bunker steps.

The trouble is that Lebanon isn’t a pick-up bar kind of town. Dean drives the hour up 281 to Hastings, Nebraska – it was really that or Hayes – with Zeppelin in the tape deck, interjecting the occasional bit of sex advice into the overall conversation. 

He picks a place on 2nd Street, and Cas follows him in. There’s a pool table, and some old video game cabinets, and the crowd is still a little thing, but it’s early so that’s alright. Dean buys a couple of beers at the bar and settles them in at a table in the corner by the pool table. 

“I still think this plan is ridiculous.”

“Yeah, well, shows what you know.” Dean leans back in his chair and surveys the room, looking for likely prospects. “Drink your beer.”

Castiel obliges with a look of mild protest.

They spend the first hour or so more or less the way they had in the car, making idle chit-chat while they wait for the clientele to fill in a bit. Dean eventually gets the bartender to break a five so they can play a round of pool, which turns out to be a hell of a game with an angel who innately understands physics but has zero skill with a cue. He still wins, but it’s a narrower margin than he’s used to.

Dean downs the last of his beer – his third, not that it’s slowing him down all that much – and stands up. “I’m going to grab another. You need anything?” 

Castiel shakes his head no, indicating his half-empty glass. 

“Fair enough.”

The line is long, and he decides to check out the jukebox for maybe a minute while he waits. He ends up fighting with it because it’s all touch screens and keeps thinking he’s hitting Lil Bow Wow instead of Boston. By the time he gets it sorted out and gets his beer, Cas is standing by the pool table talking to a girl. 

A _hot_ girl. Chin-length dark brown razor-cut hair, eyes almost bluer than Castiel’s, and the most fuckable mouth he’s seen in a while. Her jeans are so tight that they might as well be painted on, and she’s got perfect handful tits filling out her t-shirt. Athletic body, probably flexible. _Damn_. 

Dean tries to slip unnoticed over to the Pac Man machine – much as he’d like to poach some of that action, he’s not _that_ big a douche, even if he does want to keep an eye on things – but Cas spots him, grins, and waves him over.

“Real subtle, Cas,” he mutters under his breath on his way to join them.

“Quincy, this is Dean,” Cas says and he puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “He’s my wingman.”

He shoots Cas a look, then offers his hand in greeting. “Hey.” 

She clasps his hand, visibly appraising him. “Hello, Dean. Nice to meet you.” She doesn’t let go of his hand, and he feels a little guilty about how much he’s going to hate turning her down.

“She’s into threesomes,” Cas says, as casually as he might say that she liked to collect stamps or watch hockey. He looks proud of himself, like he’s won some kind of contest. 

“Oh. Uh, cool. Me too,” Dean sputters. “Yeah, threesomes are awesome.”

* * *

He’s not lying when he says he’s into threesomes. This isn’t his first. Hell, he’s lost count. It’s just that ordinarily it’s him and two chicks, not him, a hot chick, and Cas. Which is weird. Not Robo-Sam suggesting double-teaming some girl levels of weird – that was so fucked up he’d almost wrecked the car when Sam had suggested it – but this was definitely in that how-is-this-my-life zone with a side of never-going-to-unsee-this. 

On the other hand, Quincy is not only hot, but she has decent booze and an apartment two blocks away, and damned if he’s not going to try and power through the weirdness with liquor. Namely the bottle of Captain Morgan on the coffee table left over from when they made their first round of rum and Cokes before she started basically taking turns making out with both of them from her spot on the middle of the couch. 

He’s just about to reach for it when she grabs him by the shirt to kiss him. Her lips are sweet and sticky from the Coke. When he opens his eyes, he notices that she’s pushed Cas down between her legs.

Cas apparently understands this concept because he undoes her belt, and starts to work her jeans down her hips. Quincy lifts up, shifts a little so she’s half-leaning against the back of the couch, half against Dean, and goes back to kissing him. Dean slips a hand under her shirt and cups her breast. He brushes her nipple with his thumb and she sighs into his mouth. She reaches back and strokes Dean through his jeans. 

_Jesus_. 

In the edge of his vision sees Cas tease her, brushing his fingers over her panties before nuzzling her through them. Her legs are splayed wide, one on the couch and one off of it, and he settles in between them with an intensity of focus that makes Dean’s breath catch. 

Quincy undoes Dean’s belt, and that brings him back into the moment pretty quick. He’s grateful that they all took their shoes off when the drinking started, because getting out of his jeans has become a priority. She doesn’t have to stroke him hard because he’s already there, and she gives him this coy little nibble just under the head of his cock before she starts to suck him off. 

He can tell when Cas gets to work in earnest because Quincy starts making these little noises in her throat. It’s so good Dean can barely fucking cope with it. He looks over at Cas, reflexively curious, and finds himself transfixed by the sight of her hand in his hair while he eats her cunt, fingers probing and filling her while she grinds against his face. 

She pulls his hair and Cas lifts his head. Dean looks down at her, and she gives his dick a long, slow lick before she pulls Castiel in to kiss her. His lips are swollen and moist, and Dean might take it a little personally except that Quincy is stroking him, and her hand is almost as good as her mouth. 

“Condom,” she murmurs against Castiel’s lips and sits up to point out the end table. She turns back to Dean, runs her tongue around his glans while he fiddles with the rubber. Her eyes never leave Dean’s, even as she guides Cas inside her. 

“Kiss him,” she whispers, voice rough.

And god damn, if Dean isn’t horned up enough to do it. 

Cas’s face is damp and rough with stubble, and he tastes like booze and pussy. It’s awkward at first, tentative. It’s hard to get things lined up, too, with Cas finding his rhythm and Quincy matching it, but Cas grasps the back of Dean’s neck (half for support, half to hold them together) and their tongues and lips are a riot of lust. Dean wants to blame the liquor, wants to blame the hot girl on his dick, but even combined that’s not the whole truth. 

When they pull apart, Cas rearranges himself and pulls her on top of him with ease, then hands Dean a condom and a bottle of lube. It takes him a second to realize what Cas is expecting, but then Quincy looks over her shoulder at him and he makes the connection. Oh. _Oh_.

Two guys and a girl. Right. Thank you, Pizza Guy. Or _Casa Erotica 8_ , probably. In any case, he’s grateful for Cas’ weird fascination with his porn collection.

He lubes up his fingers and grins at the way she squeaks when he drizzles some of it on her ass. When his thumb breaches her she makes the most incredible sound, like he’s just opened her up entirely. He works her, easy, easy, until she’s loose enough he can slip the tip of his cock inside. 

Cas stops and lets her bear down slow to admit him. Below her, Cas sucks in a breath, clearly feeling Dean’s cock enter her. Slowly, the two of them start to move again, building a rhythm. Quincy comes, clenching and shuddering and wailing beautiful gibberish. Dean almost goes over the falls too, but he holds back out of sheer force of will, pushing in deep and then holding still while she rides the wave.

When he starts up again, he shifts his hips, angles himself to rub against the place where he can feel the pressure of Cas’ dick. Between the soft, fucked-out noises Quincy makes as they rock her between them, the sounds Cas is making, and the way it feels inside her with Cas fucking her too, he knows he’s not going to last much longer. Dean gives himself a last few languid strokes, and then lets himself go.

His orgasm leaves him shaking, and he makes one last desperate grind as he finishes. He stays inside, reluctant to leave the warmth of Quincy’s body until she gently reaches around, puts her fingertips against the edge of the condom, and slides him out. He slumps back on the couch, definitely more than a little woozy from endorphins and exertion, and pulls off the condom and drops it in his empty SOLO cup.

Beside him, Cas and Quincy redouble their efforts, and before long Cas goes over the brink, gripping her hips so hard Dean is sure they’ll bruise, though judging by the sounds she’s making she doesn’t mind. They pull apart slowly, and she takes the condom from him, disposing of it before giving Dean an unexpected, satisfied-looking clean-up suck. She does the same to Cas.

They sprawl together in a heap on the sofa. Quincy is still between them, but their limbs are a tangle, and Cas has no problem reaching Dean to rest his palm against his jaw. Dean doesn’t bother to move away. Everything feels too good right now to even think about it.

“God, I can’t decide if I want a shower now, or if I should wait and see if you boys are up for another round,” Quincy murmurs. 

Dean smiles against her skin. “I don’t need my dick to get you off.” He lets his fingers trace their way down between her legs, where she is already -- no, still -- wet. He teases idly at her clit with a fingertip and she makes warm, soft noises. He builds slowly, slowly while Cas kisses her, caressing her with a free hand. 

She is practically writhing between them and Dean is fucking loving it. He loves the way she is melting under his hand, loves the slickness of her, loves the way she squirms against him. Loves the touching. Loves the wanting to be touched.

Quincy kneels over Dean’s face and he licks and sucks at her, slipping a finger or a thumb in here and there, filling and teasing her. He hums his pleasure against her when he feels a warm hand stroking his recovering cock. She shudders above him, and it’s not long before he’s hard again, eagerly fucking a mouth that can only be Castiel’s. 

He makes a little sound of protest when Castiel stops, but then Cas is rolling a condom onto him and whispering to Quincy to face the arm of the sofa so that Dean can kneel behind and slide his cock into her. 

Cas, who watches them before he lubes his fingers and slowly begins to open Dean up, the way he’d done with Quincy, and _oh god_. 

He wants to freeze, to tell Cas to cut it the fuck out, except really he doesn’t want it to stop. He wants it all, the fuck and the being fucked. He knows how good this is going to feel. Quincy is tight and hot on his dick, and Cas is pushing in slowly while Dean bites Quincy’s shoulder and plays with her tits and _Jesus Christ_ , there aren’t even words for this except for _perfect_ and _fuck_ and _yes_. 

Dean isn’t sure how long he lasts, but he comes so hard he almost blacks out. They rearrange almost effortlessly: Cas finishes Quincy with his mouth and his fingers while she kisses Dean and Cas jerks himself off onto Dean’s stomach. 

Quincy kisses Cas, eyes lidded and skin flushed, then licks his cum away.

* * * 

The three of them eventually stumble to the bedroom, and cram themselves onto her futon. Dean wakes up to the smell of cooking bacon and Quincy’s warm skin. 

“Is he cooking?” she asks, slurring a little.

“Hm?” He’s still mostly asleep, and muzzy from last night’s booze. He hurts like sex, not like fighting, and that’s good enough for him. Judging by how slick and slightly sore his ass is, they must have gotten pretty freaky.

“Oh my god.” She laughs. “He totally is. Your boyfriend is cooking.”

That wakes him up. Dean blinks, stunned, as she pulls on a long t-shirt and goes to investigate the source of the bacon. “Boyfriend?” 

And then the shoe drops. 

_Shit_.

Dean is quiet at breakfast – he blames the hangover, which is true enough – but Castiel manages to hold his own for both of them in his own weird way. Quincy finds him charming enough, at least. 

Must’ve been all that time he spent working at the Gas-N-Sip. 

He is silent during the walk to the Impala, too. It’s only when they’re in their right places in the car that they speak.

“Dean –“

“First off,” he snaps, surprisingly vehement, eyes fixed on the steering wheel. “We are not a thing. This is not a…thing. You and me are not a thing.”

Castiel’s brow furrows. “A…thing?”

“I don’t know. A relationship!” Dean blurts like the word burns his mouth. “You and me? Not a thing. Not now, not ever, okay? We are not fucking, we are not dating, we are not a thing. We had a crazy three-way with a hot chick in Nebraska and that’s it. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Second, I don’t fuck guys, okay? Not my thing.” His hands tighten on the wheel. 

Castiel hesitates. “Okay.”

“And if you tell Sammy about this –“ 

“I understand, Dean,” Cas says. He is infuriatingly calm. How can he be calm? “Last night was…atypical. It would be inappropriate to involve Sam.”

“Inappropriate? Yeah, that’s one word for it.”

Silence hangs heavy between them. 

“Dean?”

“What?”

“I appreciate you being my wingman.”

Dean grits his teeth and starts the engine. It’s going to be a long-ass drive back to Kansas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maximum thanks to 51stCenturyFox for the beta.
> 
> Title is a line from "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest. Led Zeppelin might be Dean's favorite, but Judas Priest is definitely his safe place.
> 
> Timeline note: this would fit mid-S9, probably between "Holy Terror" (9x09) and "First Born" (9x11).
> 
> 4/10/14 Update: So this was originally just kind of a one-off, but my porn bunnies apparently breed plot and background. I'll be adding chapters until this continuity is out of my system, and updating tags accordingly. Check notes at the end of future installments for more info.


	2. It's a Sin the Way We Live to Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still struggling with Kevin's death and the rift between himself and Sam, Dean is doing his damnedest to punch down old traumas. This thing with Castiel isn't helping. Occurs within a period of weeks after "[Revved Up, Fit to Break](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1419645)."
> 
> -
> 
> _Dean opens the fridge sometimes just to look at the contents. Orange juice. Milk. Lunch meat. Tortillas. Salad mix. Ground chuck. Cheese. Half a cherry pie. Leftover spaghetti. Yogurt. Beer. Almost a dozen condiments._  
>     
>  _Lisa used to tease him about it when he’d lived with her and Ben. He’d go into the kitchen and stand there, staring into the fridge like it was some kind of masterpiece. She thought he was just getting used to life off the road, but it ran deeper than that._

Dean opens the fridge sometimes just to look at the contents. Orange juice. Milk. Lunch meat. Tortillas. Salad mix. Ground chuck. Cheese. Half a cherry pie. Leftover spaghetti. Yogurt. Beer. Almost a dozen condiments. 

Lisa used to tease him about it when he’d lived with her and Ben. He’d go into the kitchen and stand there, staring into the fridge like it was some kind of masterpiece. She thought he was just getting used to life off the road, but it ran deeper than that. 

He pulls up the sleeves of his battered gray henley shirt and grabs a half-gallon carton of milk, twists off the cap, takes a big gulp straight from the container. Lisa had teased him about that too, like it was some kind of “man thing,” like leaving the toilet seat up. 

It’s weird having a place that’s not somebody else’s. It’s weird having enough. It makes him nervous, like tomorrow he’ll wake up and it’ll all be gone again. 

Dean may have got an A+ in sheltering his little brother, but Sam was a smart kid and saw more than Dean meant him to. He probably doesn’t need two guesses as to why only one of them is built like a brick shithouse, and he was quick enough on the uptake when they moved into the bunker to start buying a spare half-gallon with the groceries and write “SAM” on the one he didn’t want Dean to drink out of. On the other hand, Sam probably hasn’t wondered why he’s never once run out of milk on Dean’s watch, and why Dean always does. 

He shuts the fridge a little harder than he means to and tries to punch the panic down. For a split second he’s glad Sam and Kevin aren’t in here to see him like this, except he’d give just about anything to be taking Kevin’s shit right now, and wishing his brother away comes somewhere after cutting his own hands off in terms of priorities. 

Without thinking, he touches the back of his neck, traces a spot where a scar used to be. He’s not consciously aware of the memory of a forest, of being twelve, of his father shouting at him that _Damn it, Dean, we do not go to pieces because when we do that people like Sammy die_.

Instead, he reaches into a cabinet and pulls out a fresh bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label and a glass and carries them to the garage.

He pours himself a double in his Baby’s back seat and hammers it down with barely a grimace before pouring another one. That one lasts about as long, and after the third he gives up on using a glass and leaves it in the floorboard. Might as well go straight to the bottle. 

When the alcohol doesn’t want to go down any more, he drops the bottle over into the front seat and sprawls across the back, legs sticking out, and stares at his Baby’s ceiling. He rubs his face. Likes the sensation. It feels dull and tape-delayed, kind of like a worn-out 8-track.

It’s peaceful.

“Dean?”

He doesn’t answer. It’s not out of spite – he’s too anesthetized for spite – but more because talking to his brother sounds like a lot of work right now. Sam doesn’t seem to get that memo, though, because suddenly there he is, sliding into the front seat and glaring at Dean like he’d rather be eating glass instead. 

Dean props himself up on his elbows. “Does this mean we’re talking again?”

“Castiel called. He said you didn’t answer your phone.”

Dean frowns. “So, what, he needs someone to teach him how to leave me a voicemail?”

“No, but he says maybe you should try not to pray to him quite so loud if you’re going to hole up in your car for a bout of day drinking.” Sam tosses Dean’s phone at him and Dean fumbles it.

“Pretty sure he didn’t say it like that.”

Sam narrows his eyes, picks up the bottle of Red Label. “Isn’t this the one from the kitchen?”

Dean ignores him. Sam won’t like any of the answers he has for that question.

“Christ, Dean. Seriously?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want me to answer, Sammy.” 

Sam takes the bottle with him when he leaves. Dean wonders if maybe they’ve got a tall enough ladder to hang a mirror where Sam can see it from his high horse. For a guy with his panties in a twist over not being dead, he’s got a real shitty attitude about self-destructive behavior. 

It takes him three tries to unlock his phone. He keeps dropping it, or sliding his finger too far on the touchscreen. He gets it eventually, though, and checks his voicemail on speaker. The tinny fake female robot voice introduces each message, one after another:

First message. “Dean. It’s Castiel.” Pause. “I was…calling you back.” Click.

Next message. “Dean. It’s Castiel.” Pause. “Dean? Call me.” Click.

Next message. “Dean. It’s Castiel.” Pause. “I know shouldn’t tell you where I am, but if you’re in distress, I may be near enough to assist you. If you can call me, please call me.” Click. 

Next message. “Dean. It’s Castiel.” Pause. “Sam says you’re in your car, and alive. I don’t think his declared intention to strangle you is sincere, but you may want to prepare for it just in case.” Click.

End of messages. 

Dean feels the muscles in his face move before he’s aware that he’s smiling. “Yeah, thanks Cas,” he murmurs, satisfied he’ll be heard despite the one-way connection. 

He lies there in the Impala, the only real home he’s ever known, and tries to do the math in his head on how soon he can drive. Water first. And food, to soak up some of the booze. A few hours to sleep it off and coffee and he’ll be good to go. 

First, though, he’s going to lie out here with his Baby. 

* * *

The buzz hasn’t entirely lifted when he wakes up in bed, still entirely dressed except for his shoes. He takes a hot shower to kill the stink, which helps, and makes an an actual, solid breakfast of eggs and toast and bacon. Two cups of black coffee on top of that and he’s got his shit together enough to search the news from Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, and Oklahoma for anything that looks like it needs to be salted, burned, staked, decapitated, or exorcised. 

Unfortunately, it’s a pretty dull week in the Midwest.

Sam’s in the kitchen at the heavy wooden mess table eating a bowl of cereal when Dean takes his dishes to the sink. 

“You get in touch with Cas?”

“Yeah. “ Dean soaps up a scrub sponge, turns on the water. “Thanks for letting him know I was okay.”

Sam scoffs quietly. “If that’s what you want to call it.” 

Dean puts the sponge down, dries his hands and turns around to face his brother. “What do you want, Sam? Apologies? Do you want me to, I don’t know, go back in time and bury you? Because dealing with a bunch of angels and Abaddon and everything else would be so easy if I was alone?”

Sam’s eyes practically blaze. “Not any more alone than you are right now.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right about that. Either way, I’m short a brother.” He barely even looks where he’s going as he pushes past Sam. Case or not, he needs to get some breathing room from…all of this.

Five minutes later he’s driving toward the highway with his phone pressed to his ear.

“Dean.”

“Tell me you’re working a case, Cas.”

“I am…working, yes.”

“I need to get out of here for a little while,” he admits. “So do you need an extra pair of hands or what?”

“No, my extremities are adequate.”

“Yeah, good for you. Am I going to turn North or South on 281?”

Castiel hesitates. “Go South. Call me when you reach I-70.”

* * *

Six hours and four phone calls later, Dean arrives in a dying factory town in Oklahoma. Castiel is waiting for him in a parking lot outside of an empty warehouse. 

“Dean, you should know that it’s possible I’ve misjudged the situation,” Castiel says to him as he steps out of the Impala and onto the broken surface of the abandoned parking lot. “This may be…unwise.” 

“Cas, it’s just angels, right? I’ve fought angels.” He pops the trunk, grabs his angel blade from the armory. He tucks a pistol in the back of his jeans for good measure. It won’t take down an angel, but it can slow one down in a pinch. “I mean, not that we’re going in guns blazing or anything, but if it gets real in there, I’m ready.”

“You’ve fought angels in vessels, willing to meet you on human footing because they had no fear of you,” Castiel says, and Dean catches him glancing over his shoulder at the warehouse like he’s afraid it’s going to jump out at him. “These are not those angels.”

Dean closes the trunk, satisfied. “So wait, what are we talking about, Cas?”

“Do you remember when we first met?”

He shrugs. “Sure. You were kind of a dick. You knocked Bobby out.”

“Before that.” 

Dean remembers the ring of blasted trees, the gas station, the shattering glass. His eyes go wide. “Seriously? They can still do that? I thought with Metatron it’d be, you know, vessels for everybody.”

“No. Not everybody.”

As if on cue, Dean catches a faint high-pitched whine in the air and looks up. It starts like tinnitus and builds fast but windless, and with the rumble of a crashing jet. The broken pavement quakes beneath his boots.

Right. No wings.

“Cas?”

“Get down!” Castiel’s hand on his shoulder is like steel, and Dean’s got no choice but to let his knees buckle. Not that he could stand up to this if he wanted to. Dean covers his ears with his hands and grimaces, then screams at the way a sound that goes beyond human frequencies gets into his bones and threatens to rattle him apart. Above him, Castiel shouts into the din, blade drawn and eyes blazing white, as utterly alien as anything in a human body can be. 

The roar subsides.

He lowers his hands from his ears and wipes at the moisture he feels on his lip. His nose is bleeding. He’s unsteady when Castiel brings him to his feet.

“Okay.” Dean says, reflexively watching the sky. “Those kinds of angels.”

“Yes,” Castiel says, and lays a hand on Dean to heal his injuries. “They’ve agreed to meet with us.” 

“So that was just them being _friendly_?“

“Yes.”

“Oh. Good.”

Castiel picks Dean’s angel blade up from the rubbled ground. He wipes the dust from it with his coat sleeve before handing it back. It’s a strange gesture, like it almost happens in slow motion. It’s a gesture of trust. A vote of confidence. A warning. 

They walk in silence.

The interior of the warehouse is eerie: silent, but the hair on his arms stands on end, like the air is charged with static. He thinks again of his first meeting with Castiel. The storm. In here, though, the air is too still. Tense.

“How many of them are there?”

“Fifty. Maybe sixty. This isn’t a garrison. It’s more than that now. A significant force.”

“Where are they?”

“We are hiding from you, Dean Winchester,” the little girl says to him from a high walkway and winks. She’s all of maybe six, her kinky hair pulled back in a pair of twisted pigtails. She says something Dean doesn’t catch in Enochian to Castiel, who returns the greeting with a solemn expression.

“This is Arariel. Her garrison…hid from me. Before Purgatory.”

“We also hid ourselves from Raphael. I made a judgment call. I continue to believe it was the right one,” she says, descending the metal stairs. “You are much diminished, Castiel.”

He bows his head. “Actions have consequences.”

“Yes. They do.” She tilts her head to the side. “They will.” 

Dean tenses, tightens his grip on the angel blade in his jacket.

She raises a hand and walks toward them. “Peace. That was not a threat. We are--” she tilts her head “perhaps it’s best that you understand us as conscientious objectors.”

“What, like draft dodgers?” Dean asks. Arariel gives him an appraising look, shrugs, then turns her attention back to Castiel. 

“Raphael called you traitors,” Castiel says, kneeling down so that he can meet her eye-to-eye. 

“So did you, once, when you named yourself God.”

Cas bows his head. The pain and shame practically radiates from him. 

“You know we will have to leave this place, now that you’ve found us. War follows you, Castiel. You reek of it.” Despite her words, her tone is kind. She lifts Castiel’s face with her hands. 

“I did what I had to do.”

“So did Bartholomew. The only difference is who you’re doing it for.” She turns away. “Go fight, Castiel. See if that ends the war.”

“You could help me end it faster.”

She picks up a feather from the ground. Gray, probably from the pigeons roosting in the rafters. “You are surrounded by my soldiers, Castiel. I could end it right now. I have not.”

Castiel smiles. He stands, and Dean stands with him. 

“You were always wiser than me, Arariel.”

She smiles as she ascends the stairs. Cas turns to leave and Dean follows. 

When the sun hits his skin, Dean takes a big breath, huffs it out and tries to shake off the big weirdness of the factory. They’re halfway to the cars before it occurs to him that the whole ordeal was easy. Terrifying, sure, but it feels too simple. Too pat. 

“So, wait. That’s it?”

Castiel frowns. “You would have preferred violence?”

“I was kind of expecting a showdown, not a quick heart-to-heart with a bunch of pacifists.”

Castiel gives the warehouse a nervous look, “You misunderstand Arariel. She is…formidable in dispensing justice.”

“Dude, she just told you, she’s sitting this one out.” 

Castiel is angry suddenly, and moves in close. “No, Dean, she just let us walk into her place of concealment and gave me her blessing. She could have easily stripped the flesh from our bones and ripped the grace from my vessel. We are having this conversation because she is _merciful_.”

“So why did you need me?”

Castiel tilts his head to the side. “I didn’t. You asked me for directions.”

Dean lets out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, I guess I did.” He searches the sky, sees only clouds. “So what now?”

“I need some time to review the information I’ve gathered and plan so I can try to predict Bartholomew’s next moves, and look into leads about other angels who might stand against him.”

“You could always come back to Kansas with me. You know we’ve got the space.” 

“I thought you said you needed to get away from Kansas.”

Dean shrugs. “And here I am.”

Cas considers it for a moment. “Okay.”

* * *

Dean gets them a room for the night at a grungy motel on the edge of town and orders in a couple of pizzas. Dean demolishes all of one and part of the other, as well as most of a six pack. He’s been on the road all day, and he’s kind of substituting food for rest and comfort. 

When he goes to sleep, Cas is busy with his notes. He’s still there six hours later when Dean wakes up with a full bladder and an itch to get back on the road. They’re on the road by ten, Dean in the Impala and Cas in his Continental. They hit Lebanon a little after six. 

“Sammy? You here?” Dean shouts as he steps into the library. He doesn’t care they’re not talking. He knows better than to walk into anywhere with hunters and guns in it without announcing himself. “I’m back. I brought Cas.”

“In here!” Sam answers from the library. 

Sam puts down his book when they enter, gets up from his chair, hugs Cas. Dean picks up the book – a paperback copy of _A Game of Thrones_. 

“Finally reading the books, huh?”

“Yeah.” Sam holds out his hand, face friendly but eyes hard. Dean passes it back. 

He leaves Sam and Cas to catch up, drops his duffel in his room, and heads for the kitchen. He opens the fridge, pulls out the pie, grabs a fork, and sits down at the wooden mess table. He uses his fork to pry a slice away from the others in the tin, just to have a line of demarcation. He’s about halfway through the slice when Sam and Cas join him. 

“You going to be hungry after that? I could cook something.” Sam digs around in the fridge. “Tacos?”

“Yeah, sure.” He knows Sam’s just putting on a good face because Cas is around, but he’ll take it. He finishes the slice, puts his fork down in the tin and pushes it across the table to Castiel. 

Cas gives him a curious look. Dean nods encouragement at him. Cas picks up the fork, a little uncertain, and tries a bite of the pie. His eyes are fixed on Dean, his expression unreadable, as he swallows it, then puts down the fork.

“Cas?” Sam asks, bemused. “You hungry? I can make enough for three.”

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

Dean ignores the questioning look Sam gives him as he clears away the pie.

They make idle chit-chat while Sam cooks. Dean hands out the beer, and they spend the better part of a couple of hours just being…normal. He can’t remember the last time that happened, and it’s a welcome reprieve no matter how fucked up and fake it is in places.

They break after dinner, Cas to his notes, Sam to…whatever Sam does. Dean grabs a laptop off the library table and takes it to his room. He plugs the headphones from his iPod into the jack and lays down on his bed, computer resting on his stomach. He grabs the flask out of the bedside table, takes a slug of whatever cheap-ass sour mash he’s filled it with – whatever it is, it tastes like paint thinner – and undoes his belt.

He surfs around for pics at first, just to get in the mood. It’s mostly topless girl-on-girl stuff to start, though he finds a couple of good shots of girls pulling a full Whitesnake on muscle cars that make him linger. He’s nursing a semi before he moves on to the videos. Pictures are good – nothing beats a good spank mag – but he likes the videos because he can hear them. He can close his eyes and it’ll still be right there, happening just for him.

He finds a site with some Casa Erotica clips and picks one of his old favorites. Hell, he’s basically got it memorized. He undoes the button of his jeans and slides them down past the middle of his thighs, stroking himself as the camera takes in every inch of Suzy “Carmelita” Lee’s beautiful, tan body. 

Oh yeah. He’s tapped that. Losing his secondary virginity had been _awesome_. 

His hands are nothing like hers, but he rolls his wrist like she did anyway because damn, it feels as good as it looks. His hips move a little to complement the motion of his fist. He bites his lip, matches the rhythm, trades off between watching the video and remembering how he’d nailed her, right on the floor. The rug burn on his knees didn’t fade for a week. Thinks about dark hair wet with sweat, blue eyes looking up at him, daring him to say no. Thinks about the rustle of wings, and –

“Dean.”

Dean startles upright, tries to cover himself with the laptop, ends up pulling the headphone plug out of the jack. He fumbles with it, jams it back in so as not to broadcast what he’s doing, even if it’s obvious. “Damn it, Cas. Don’t you knock?”

“I did. Twice.”

”Well can it wait? Because unless you’re planning to finish me off, man, I’m gonna need about ten, fifteen.” It’s exactly the sort of alpha male, no homo bullshit he’d throw at Sam or Kevin to run them off, and he says it without thinking.

Castiel just closes the door behind him. It’s only a couple of steps to the foot of Dean’s bed.

Yeah, it’s possible he’s misjudged this situation.

“Cas –“

“It’s okay.” Castiel kneels at the foot of the bed next to Dean’s legs and lets his coat fall from his shoulders.

The video is still going, Suzy Lee begging for it in his ears in genuinely terrible Spanish as Cas takes Dean’s cock into his warm, wet mouth.

Dean makes a sound that’s almost more whimper than moan. _Fuck_. This is not how porn is supposed to work. It’s not like this is the first time he’s had someone get him off with porn on, but one, he’s never really done it with anybody he’s going to have to see again, and two, that is literally the least crazy thing about this situation because there’s a hot porn star on his laptop screen that he’s _actually boned_ , and right next to that screen is Cas. Sucking his dick. Like, really going to town on it. 

This is like…instant orgy. Just add Castiel.

Dean moves the laptop over so can still see the screen, but so it’s not blocking the rest of the view. Cas doesn’t even seem to notice. His eyes are closed, and he’s got this blissed-out, focused look going. 

_Shit, that’s hot_.

It’s a terrible idea, and Dean hesitates before he reaches out to run his fingers through Castiel’s hair. He cups the back of his skull, giving Cas his blessing. Dean closes his eyes and lets his head fall back onto the pillows. He doesn’t have to look at either of them: he knew everything he needed to know about Suzy Lee’s body before he seduced her out of her purity pledge, and he’s been thinking about Castiel’s mouth more than he’s comfortable with since they’d fucked each other over a hot chick who picked them both up in a bar.

Not that Castiel’s some kind of blowjob savant, but he’s enthusiastic, and this is better than his hand: the texture of the palate, the light grip of a tongue, and the scrape of stubble on his thigh. He loves the light vibrations every time Cas makes a sound that Dean can’t hear because he’s got Cabana Nights blasting into his ears.

He tightens his fingers in Cas’ hair, makes him moan. And yeah, Dean thinks, okay. Here we go. Cas wants to get his mouth fucked? He’ll make that happen, but he’s going to take control a little here. He sets a pace with his hips to match the slap of skin from the video and Cas obliges. Dean bites his lip, feels more than hears his own gasp of pleasure. 

He thinks about fucking Suzy Lee on the carpet of her apartment, remembers how she tasted, sharp and rich on his tongue. Remembers the softness of her breasts. The way she smelled. Wants her here, too, but the video will do. 

Except he keeps watching Cas instead of the porn on his screen. 

Dean hates himself for it. He wants to push Castiel out of his bed, scream at him, slam his face against the bricks until he bleeds, but it’s _Cas_ , and he knows why he’s in here. Knows he said “Cas” by accident watching fucking Suzy Lee videos. His face burns, and he shuts his eyes again. Shuts out everything but the fucking noises in his ears and the mouth bobbing on his dick. 

_Why’d you have to come in here, man?_ Dean thinks, not entirely sure or caring if it’s like a prayer Cas can hear. _Why’d you have to dig this shit up?_

It’s not a release when he comes. He doesn’t warn Cas. Dean just lets it happen and doesn’t let go of Castiel’s hair even when Cas’ rhythm stutters because he chokes a little on the jizz. 

When he does let go, Cas sits up slow, wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb and sucks it clean. 

Dean pulls the headphones off his head and tries to get his jeans back into place. He feels raw, too vulnerable. He’s too naked, even in his clothes.

“Dean, I –“

Dean raises a hand. “No.”

“You –“

“Look, can we not right now?” The flask is already in his hand and he downs the last of it. Chokes a little. 

“Here,” he says, pushing the laptop toward Castiel without even looking at him. “Have at.”

Dean closes the door behind him with a click and does up his belt. He practically jogs to the kitchen where he digs through the cupboards until he finds where Sam hid the bottle of Red Label. He doesn’t even bother with a glass this time. He just sits down at the table, twists away the cap, and takes a long, deep drink that leaves him gasping.

Castiel walks in a couple of minutes later. He’s wearing the coat again.

“That was quick.”

“I didn’t—“ Castiel says, not looking embarrassed exactly, but more like he’s trying to navigate expectations that don’t work in his own brain.

“Well, great. I guess that means I don’t have to change the sheets.”

Cas sits down across from him, like it’s dinner again and he’s invited instead of invading the tri-county area that is currently Dean Winchester’s Personal Space. 

Dean lifts the bottle to his lips again, ignores the burn of the booze. 

He sets it on the table. Looks Cas in the eye. Slides the half-empty bottle across to him. A challenge.

Castiel downs it, a nearly perfect mirror image to Dean except he finishes the bottle. Slides it back to Dean.

“Don’t you have some kind of research or notes to do?” Dean says. He picks up the bottle, watches the last drop of liquor as he rolls it around in the bottom. “You know, dickish angels getting killed by even more dickish angels because Metatron stole the keys to the treehouse?”

“Yes.” 

“So go do it.” He starts to raise the bottle to his lips to catch that final drop, but Castiel puts his hand over Dean’s and lowers the bottle back down to the table. 

Dean frowns, glares at Cas, who keeps looking at him like he wants to find something but keeps coming up empty. He feels Castiel squeeze his hand around the bottle. He starts to make a joke before he realizes Cas isn’t holding hands with him. He’s crushing the bottle.

“It doesn’t matter to the bottle how it breaks, Dean. It goes to pieces anyway.”

A flaw forms in the glass, glitters, wants to spider. Wants to crack jagged and dig into the flesh of his palm like teeth. “Cas—“

“Do you understand me, Dean?”

Dean starts to panic. He can’t do this. Can’t have this conversation. “What the hell else am I supposed to do, Cas?”

The bottle cracks, threatens to buckle under the force.

Castiel releases his hand. “Let go.”

Dean jerks his hand away from the bottle and flexes his fingers, rubbing his hand as Castiel walks out. When he’s gone, Dean turns his attention again to the bottle and its single, perfect fracture. He lifts it with his sore hand, tests its weight.

It’s beautiful when it shatters against the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, a million thank yous and a tiara to [51stCenturyFox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox), my enabler and genius beta. 
> 
> Okay, so when I wrote "Revved Up, Fit to Break" I didn't really intend to start writing a bigger thing. Apparently, though, I get porn bunnies that demand additional plot, development, and gratuitous smut. Er. Given the chronology here, I'm declaring S9 AU with some events and timelines being different from the show. Again, this is clearly the disadvantage of discovering a bigger story in something I thought I could kind of handwave for a one-off. This is probably not a bug so much as a feature, and I'll do my best to keep the flavor of things in the right zone despite veering off a bit.
> 
> Title is from "Party" by Boston.


	3. Smile and Wave Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's road so far in seven parts, at least with regard to certain desires. 
> 
> .

**1985, A roadside motel, somewhere on I-44**

His dad is listening to music. He says he does it because it helps Sammy sleep, but Dean knows his dad likes the music too, because his dad always grins big when Dean learns the words and sings along.

_“That little faggot with the earring and the makeup_  
Yeah, buddy, that’s his own hair  
That little faggot’s got his own jet airplane  
That little faggot he’s a millionaire…” 

Dean looks up from his coloring book. “What’s a faggot?”

His dad looks over from his journal. “It’s an insult.”

“Oh.” He blinks, considers it. “Can I call Sammy a faggot when he’s dumb and he won’t stop crying?”

“Jesus, Dean. No,” his dad snaps. Dean shrinks back, waits for a cuff to the side of the head, but his dad just goes back to writing in his journal instead. 

“Your brother’s not a faggot and neither are you.”

* * *

**1996, Sioux Falls, South Dakota**

Sneaking out of Bobby Singer’s place had been the easy part. Getting back in, though, is turning out to be a problem. Dean suspects that mixing beer and weed is probably going on his “awesome-but-stupid” list, when and if he ever actually decides to write it down.

On the other hand, he’s got $150 in his pocket he didn’t have before, so that’s a definite plus. 

Paying for sex isn’t a weird idea for him – he’s growing up around hunters, and they do that shit all the time, even his dad – but he’s never turned a trick himself before. Okay, he hadn’t really gone out to do more than drink on his fake IDs and maybe get laid – he kids himself he really does look twenty-two, especially in his jacket – but then he’d noticed a guy out of the corner of his eye checking him out. 

It’s not like Dean wasn’t curious. Like, he knows he’s not gay or anything, but sometimes he looks and wonders what the appeal is. Nothing wrong with getting paid to do a thing you already wanted to try, right? 

Dean fiddles with the window, swears under his breath. There’s no way he closed it this well on the way out, which means somebody must have noticed it. If he’s lucky, it was Sammy. If he isn’t –

Bobby Singer clears his throat. Dean sighs, slumps his shoulders, and tries to look sober. “Hey, Bobby. Don’t you usually like to wait inside to tear me a new one?”

“This ain’t a talk for inside.” 

And suddenly Dean’s scared, because Bobby looks real serious all of a sudden. 

“Yeah, alright,” he says, raising his chin a little, faking brave and suddenly grateful he’s got the tail end of a mixed buzz going on. “Where are we gonna do this?”

Bobby sits him down on the trunk of a broken-down Nova and asks him, point-blank: “So are you doing it for the sex or the money?”

 _Fuck._ “I got no idea what you’re talking about, Bobby.”

“Oh, cut the crap, Dean. Missy down at the tavern called me the minute you left the place.”

Dean looks down at his boots. His face is burning. He’s grateful for the dark. “Doesn’t matter, does it, Bobby? Everybody gets something out of it.”

“You think your daddy is going to feel the same way?”

Dean huffs out a bitter laugh. 

“Jesus, Dean.” Bobby sighs. “Look, I got no problem with where you choose to dip your stick as long as you’re not dumb about it, but selling it’s pretty damn dumb unless you’re real eager to spend some time in county. ‘Cept you’re still a minor, so who knows? They’ll probably just ship you off somewhere again.”

He doesn’t tell Bobby that he’d almost decided to stay in Hurleyville. He’s pretty sure that place was a fluke, anyway: the one good place you get to go in a huge, shitty-looking system.

“And you never did answer my question.”

Dean shrugs, shakes his head. “Both, I guess.”

“Well, shit. John ain’t gonna like that any,” Bobby mutters. 

“It’s not like I’m _gay_ , Bobby,” he says, freaking out a little. “He got me high, and he gave me some pretty good money for the favor of draining my balls. It was just, you know, convenient.” 

“Not sure your daddy’s gonna see the distinction there, kiddo. He sees a lot of things in black and white these days.”

Dean rests his elbows on his knees, buries his face in his hands. “You gonna tell him?”

Bobby makes a face like it’s the dumbest thing Dean has ever asked him. “Hell, no. Least, not unless you put me in a position where I have to. So don’t do that. ”

* * *

**2002, Portland, Oregon**

Dean’s been hunting on his own now for a couple of years. Not exclusively – especially not now that Sammy’s gone to college and left him alone in the life with his dad – but he likes the flexibility, and nothing keeps him sharp like the adrenaline he gets knowing he’s fighting without backup. 

That’s not the kind of adrenaline he’s got going right now, though, because right now he’s pressed up against the wall, still covered in graveyard dirt, kissing the guy whose uncle they just salted and burned. The guy’s a civilian, but smart enough to be a hunter, which is how they’d both ended up in the cemetery.

Dean’s still kind of trying to make sense of how he’d ended up in the guy’s apartment.

He’s pretty much strictly “be the hero, get the girl,” but this guy’s punching buttons Dean doesn’t usually acknowledge. Call it a combination of almost getting killed together and post-hunt wood, maybe. And hey, Portland’s a big town and Dean’s going to get the hell out of here before sun-up. Total consequence-free zone.

Dean grips the guy’s hips harder, digs his aching hard-on against the front of his jeans. Elias – the guy with the dead uncle – obliges by sliding his hand between them and grinding the palm of his hand against Dean’s cock. Dean lets his head fall back against the wall. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Elias growls against his neck. “You wanna?”

He should take the out, maybe just go jerk off in the Impala. Instead he says ” _Oh god, yes_ ,” and bucks up into the guy’s hand.

They stumble down the hall to Elias’s bedroom, hands and mouths still engaging. Dean slides his fingers up under Elias’s shirt, caresses hot, sweat-sticky skin, before pulling the shirt off of him like a candy wrapper. 

“Nice tattoo,” he says, running his fingers over the blackbird inked across Elias’s tanned shoulder blade. “Always kind of wanted something like that.”

Elias arches his back, then turns around to help Dean out of his own t-shirt. “You don’t have any?”

“Dunno,” Dean says with a grin. “Guess you’d better check me out just in case.” 

“You’d be hot with a tattoo,” Elias says, sliding his hands down Dean’s bare torso, pressing close again as his thumbs slide down under the front waistband of Dean’s jeans. “I never asked, what are you into?”

He’s got half an idea of what Elias means, but he hasn’t got a lot of context. “You mean aside from the obvious?” It’s a neutral enough question he’s pretty sure he doesn’t look dumb. He hopes it is at least.

Elias grins, and Dean grins back, congratulating himself for being able to navigate this stuff with a hard-on. Of course, he doesn’t say anything else, which means Dean’s still got to improvise. 

“I’m flexible,” he says and cants his hips a little. He flicks his eyes down to encourage Elias to keep going. “Surprise me.”

To judge by the way Elias’ brown eyes eyes go all dilated and the way he licks his lips, that is _definitely_ an okay answer. Elias drags him to the bed by his jeans and they land on the mattress together, kissing, legs all in a tangle. 

“I gotta get out you out of these pants,” Dean hisses, rubbing up against Elias’ hip while he fumbles with the button fly left-handed. He finally gets the first two buttons undone, and digs his fingers in under the waistbands of both his jeans and his underwear and pulls. Elias lifts up to help him, and Dean drops the whole thing, jeans and underwear, on the bedroom floor. 

It’s one of those moment of truth things, seeing Elias’s cock there, sprung up proud between his legs. Dean knows the “right” response to it – recoiling, disgust – but instead he does what he actually wants. He leans down and brushes against it with his face, teasing it with his breath, feels his own dick twitch when Elias moans. It’s a rush, knowing he can make someone else, even a grown man, make that sound.

Dean tries to think about the things he likes when girls blow him, but he a little too keyed up now to be methodical. He gives Elias’s cock a slow, flat-tongued lick from base to tip, then runs his tongue around the head, right where the foreskin has pulled back. Based on the sounds he’s hearing from further up the bed, he’s doing okay. He grasps Elias’s cock at the base, squeezes a little, runs his thumb up and down along the underside of the shaft while he sucks at the tip. The taste of him isn’t bad. It’s just skin, and a warm, salty tang of pre-cum. 

“Not so hard,” Elias whispers. Dean lightens his touch and the change is almost immediate. “Yeah. That’s—oh yeah.”

Elias cups the side of his face. He doesn’t push – a thing for which Dean is grateful, given the fact that he’s probably got a hell of a gag reflex – but definitely gets them moving together. 

“Wanna be in you,” Elias gasps and Dean’s heart jumps a little, partly out of excitement, but also a little bit of fear. He can still say no, maybe just roll around with the guy while they get each other off with hands and mouths. 

He pulls off of Elias’s dick, looks up at his face. “Condom?”

“Um, duh,” Elias chuckles. “Box. Under the bed.”

Dean leans over the edge of the bed, feels around until he finds an orange cardboard Nike box. He hands it over, and Elias opens it. Inside it’s a mix of condoms and lube, as well as some other stuff. Cock rings. Butt plugs. A pair of cheap-looking handcuffs. 

Elias pulls out the lube and a condom and motions for Dean to come up the bed to him. “Want to lay on your back?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Dean says, nerves still jangling. He kicks out of his jeans and shorts and licks his lips as he crawls up the mattress. “Just put me where you want me.”

It’s weird, because he knows he’s used some of these moves on women. Like, the way Elias slides in next to him and runs a hand up his leg is apparently universal except that it terminates with the guy stroking his cock instead of Dean getting his fingers wet. He lets his head rest on the mattress while Elias returns the favor a little with his mouth. 

His lips aren’t quite as soft, and his cheek is rough when it brushes Dean’s thigh, but it’s alright. It’s nice, even. 

Elias rolls him onto his side. The first finger goes in slow, and Dean hisses between his teeth. It doesn’t _hurt_ , but it’s still a mostly unfamiliar sensation. The last time he did this was Sioux Falls, and he’d been pretty messed up at the time. He’s a little nervous about how it’s going to work. So far, he likes how it feels, but it’s hard as hell to relax..

“Damn, you’re tight,” Elias purrs against his skin. He moves his finger slow, in and out, but also in little circles. “You sure you’re up for it?”

“Yuh-huh,” Dean stammers, nodding. “It’s been a while, that’s all.”

The second finger is different. It burns a little, but once it’s in, it’s like there’s a switch in Dean’s head that flips because now he’s trying to ride Elias’ fingers. “Fuck,” he whispers as he feels himself relax back there finally. He wants more, wants it now. Wants it bad. “Please.”

Elias’ hands are warm and strong and definitely know their way around. This is way better than Sioux Falls. 

“Yeah, that’s right,” Elias murmurs against his neck as the third finger goes inside. “Open up for me. That’s it. God, look at you. You’re beautiful.” Elias leans over, kisses Dean on the lips. He fucks him lazily with his fingers while Dean makes tiny, pleading sounds into his mouth. 

Elias slides his fingers out and Dean whimpers disappointment. 

“Tell me you want it.”

“Oh fuck, I want it,” he groans. It’s like his core is melting or something, and he’s almost painfully hard. “I really, really fucking want it.” 

Elias’s cock is bigger than his fingers, and being filled up like this is kind of a challenge. The two of them lie still Elias eases in, inch by inch, and then while Dean adjusts to him. Elias presses his lips to Dean’s shoulder. 

“Take your time,” he murmurs against Dean’s nape. “I want it to be good for you.”

It’s actually Dean who starts moving first, slow and sinuous. Elias’s fingers dig sharp into Dean’s hip and Dean hisses pleasure and pain, his own fingers clutching into the sheets while he tries to say things like “fuck” and “yes” and “more.” 

They grind slow, Elias’s hand wandering over Dean’s shoulders and chest and thighs. He laces his fingers through Dean’s, and puts their joined hands on Dean’s cock, urging him on. Dean doesn’t need much encouragement. He tries to pace himself. He wants this to last. 

He’s not prepared for the way things are different when he gets off. Like, it feels good to come -- all over his hand, as well as the sheets, which he kind of feels bad about – but having something in him when it happens sends a shockwave of sensation through him that he isn’t expecting. He chokes out a surprised cry and shudders, his whole body so blissed out he just wants to collapse, right here and now, and never move again.

He’s still trembling and riding the wave when Elias finishes inside him. 

Dean lets Elias wrap his arms around him and rests his head on Elias’s chest. He doesn’t mean to doze, but it’s so good to be held. Getting on the road before sunrise feels like less of a priority. He closes his eyes. 

And then his phone buzzes. Dean untangles himself and reaches down, picks it up. It’s his dad’s number on the caller ID. 

_Shit_. Their check-in was over an hour ago. His dad’s going to go ballistic.

He slides out of bed and gathers his things in an easy pile. Now this is familiar. Fuck and run, the Hunter’s Way. He’s almost dressed when Elias sits up and rubs his eyes. “You’re leaving.”

“Yeah.” Dean holds up his phone. “Duty calls.”

Elias sighs. He’s smiling, albeit wistfully. “I feel like I just had a one-night-stand with a superhero.” 

“I like the sound of that.” Dean shrugs on his leather jacket.

“Hey,” Elias says, and grabs a notebook from his bedside table. He scribbles a number and rips the slip of paper out before handing it to Dean. “Call me if you’re ever in Portland again.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, and tucks the paper in his pocket. “Sure.”

His dad is furious when he calls back from the Impala. And yeah, Dean gets it. Hunting alone is dangerous, and there’s a protocol to follow. His dad is right. He always is. 

“What the hell kept you, anyway?”

“You know how it is,” Dean says, pulling the Impala’s ashtray open. He rolls Elias’ number up, then lights it with his Zippo and watches it burn. “Be the hero, get the girl.”

* * *

**2006, Salem, Massachusetts**

Dean’s pretty sure he’s going to strangle the next “witch” who comes up to him and tries to tell him his future, or sell him an amulet, or spray him down with some kind of _benevolent money-drawing crystal essence_.

He slams the hotel door behind him, storms in, barely notices Sam’s bemused expression until he’s untying his dress shoes so he can get out of his FBI monkey suit and into a decent pair of jeans.

“What?” 

“cockandroll.com?”

Dean blinks, completely taken off-guard. “ _What_?”

“Cock and Roll. Dot com. In my browser history.”

“Browser history?” Dean grabs the laptop out of Sam’s hands, and sure enough, there it is, right between bustyasianbeauties.com and casadelsexy.com. “What, this thing keeps a list?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Something you want to tell me, Dean?” 

“Yeah. Shut your cakehole.”

* * *

**Time is Meaningless, Hell**

The hand burns him when it tears him away from his knives, purifying his soul with holy fire. He can’t tell the difference between pain and ecstasy in the eyeblink/eternity that it takes for the beginnings of demonic corruption to sizzle away, but it’s going to leave a mark. 

He tries to fight his way out of the arms of the angel, but it’s useless. It’s an enormous, burning thing with six wings, and it can see into every corner of him.

Dean’s soul cries out when it deserts him in a box with a body that should be mouldering soup right now, but it does not see him. Its eyes are covered with wings. 

* * *

**2012, Nashville, Tennessee**

They’re down to one good card and $50 in cash. 

That’s nothing he can’t fix with a little bit of time, but his Baby’s making the wrong kind of noises, and Dean’s pretty sure it’s not going to be a cheap fix. They need cash, something’s got to give, and that something is him.

They’ve got these big Band-Aids in the first aid kit, and Dean uses one to cover up the tattoo on his chest. Satisfied he looks anonymous from the neck down, he snaps a couple of pics of his body in the hotel bathroom mirror and uploads them to the site. 

It’s not the first time he’s put out a shingle in an emergency, but it’s the first time since Bobby died, and Dean can practically feel the guy calling him an idjit from beyond the grave.

Luck, it seems, is with him. He gets a couple of offers in the first twenty minutes, and sets up a meet with the one that makes his skin crawl least, then deletes the account. The last thing he wants is for his brother to know he’s hustling more than pool tonight. 

He leaves freshly showered and carrying condoms and lube. He comes back bloodied and pissed.

“Christ, Dean. What happened to your face?”

“Bar fight,” he lies, and shoves past Sam on the way to the bathroom to inspect the damage. “Pack your stuff.”

There’s a pretty good cut in his scalp, which accounts for the worst of the blood, but he probably won’t need stitches. The right side of his face is bruised, and his ribs are killing him, but they don’t feel broken. Dean bares his teeth in the mirror, checks his mouth. 

Yeah, he’ll live.

He scrubs the blood off of his aching knuckles, rehearses the story about the bar fight in his head. If he didn’t like the idea of Sam knowing about the whoring, there’s no way Dean wants him to know his older brother got jumped by three good ol’ boys who figured they’d smear themselves a queer they’d ordered up like a delivery pizza. 

And anyway, he’s not a queer. Dean’s pretty sure he could go to the moon and back if he lined up all the pussy he’s seen. A little bit of dick on the side was just the exception proving the rule, or something.

“Seriously, Sammy. Go get your shit together. We want to be gone before the cops show up.”

* * *

**Right Now, an Impala hurtling down a darkened highway in Kansas**

He’s two hours out of Lebanon, when one of his least favorite voices pipes up from the back seat. 

“Bad day? How’s about we get you a doll, and you can show your dear old Uncle Crowley where the angel touched you, eh?”

His eyes narrow and flick to the rearview. “The hell are you doing here?”

“Doing you a favor.”

“What, like holding still while I ice your ass?” Dean narrows his eyes. He could drop gear, maybe hit the handbrake, maybe get his Baby to a full stop pretty quick, but not that quick. Crowley’s got a tactical advantage. He’s going to need to ride this out.

Crowley looks down, picks up the glass from the floorboards. “Nice mini-bar.”

“Eat me.”

“Ooh, do you think Castiel would let me?” Crowley’s face broadens into a grin. “You know angels. So clingy.”

Dean clenches his jaw. 

“Where exactly are you driving, anyway? It’s not like you have any idea where Gadreel is.” 

“So, what, you do?”

Crowley snorts. “Please. Angels? Not my thing.” He runs his hands along the edge of the front seat. It’s almost lascivious. When he leans forward, Dean has to resist the urge to elbow him in the face. “Killing Knights of Hell, on the other hand? That I may be able to help with. That is, if you’re interested.”

Dean blinks, tightens and then loosens his fingers on the wheel, turns the idea over in his head. 

“Yeah, okay. Start talking.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, maximum thanks to 51stCenturyFox, who keeps me honest and helps me winnow out the mistakes. 
> 
> The song in 1985 is "Money For Nothing" by Dire Straits. 
> 
> The title is a line from "Shooting Star" by Bad Company, which is not only a multi-part narrative about its subject, but possibly one of the most depressing classic rock songs ever.
> 
> And yeah, if I ever win the lottery, remind me to start cockandroll.com, which will undoubtedly be a site full of hot guys doing the full Whitesnake on badass muscle cars.
> 
> We're kind of back on the S9 path again-ish, but be prepared for divergence, esp. since the season is airing as I write.


	4. Happiness is a Warm Gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mark of Cain is a means to an end, and Dean is a killer. His father made damn sure of that.

He was six when his dad woke him up in the middle of the night and made him get dressed. He’d followed his dad out into the darkened parking lot to the Impala while Sammy slept alone in a bed still too big for both of them. 

Dean remembers what was in the trunk, the last of a skinwalker pack, about Dean’s own age, bound up double, maybe triple, with his mouth sealed up tight by a thick patch of duct tape. He remembers that his father had lined the trunk with a faded blue tarp. He remembers the silver knife, not a large blade, but still a killing tool too big for a six-year-old’s small, unsteady hand. He remembers how it felt when his father helped him use it to slit the kid’s -- no, the _thing’s_ \-- throat. 

It wasn’t a kid. it was a _thing_. But it sure looked like a kid.

He’d thrown up, after. Twice. But his dad had clapped him on the shoulder like some dads do at baseball practice and told him how good he was for learning to protect people. Protect Sammy.

Fucking _praised_ him for being a killer.

So Dean knows the greater good is an ugly thing, and usually it’s just as sick as the thing he’s up against. It’s the ends that have to justify the means, and those ends are bloody more often than they’re not.

Even without the particulars he grasps the scope of what Cain is saying. Knows this is Cain he’s talking to. And yeah, maybe he suspects that Sam is probably his Abel or something, what with the whole Apocalyptic bloodline he and his brother have going on, but he’s _Dean fucking Winchester_. He’s losing count of the times he’s come back from the dead or faced down the forces of Heaven and Hell. Monsters are scared of _him_.

Abaddon had better get ready, because that bitch has it coming.

* * *

Later, at the hotel, his fingers graze the Mark on his forearm. It stings, hot and angry like he’s been branded, but the skin is intact. The pain has dulled, but there’s something angry about it under the surface still. 

Killing Abaddon, killing Crowley, those are awesome, _awesome_ ends. Just thinking about them makes his whole body do that ready-to-fight thing, muscles and joints springy and ready to strike. He was fucking _made_ for this.

Dean’s tongue flicks out to lick his lips as he imagines what it’s going to be like to drive that blade into Crowley’s guts and yank up hard. He wants to see the King of Hell’s smug expression replaced with terror and pain, then fade to blank nothing while all that blood drains out around their feet. The clarity is refreshing, kind of like being back in Purgatory. All he has to do is wait for Crowley to bring him the blade.

He might as well hunt while he waits.

The Midwest and Great Lakes wires are hopping when he checks them from the hotel. He makes his list in loose block capitals and plans his routes over a fifth of Jack. There’s a thing going down in a town called Mattoon in Illinois that’s probably a couple of vetala, and some suspicious killings near Bloomington, Indiana. From there, he can swing up through Indy, then north through Chicago. 

There’s always something fucked-up going on in Chicago, and it’s big enough a hunter can work through by neighborhood and suburb instead of one and done.

He leans back against the headboard, picks up the remote. The TV has been on all night, just murmuring in the background while he works, blocking out the silence of the empty room. He surfs through the channels, one by one. Half the channels are paid programming, and the other half are tired-ass reruns. The Pay-Per-View is a foregone conclusion.

And hell, at least he’s alone this time. 

Dean squirms out of his jeans and tosses them across the room where his duffel sits on the luggage rack, then does the same with his t-shirt and his socks. The cheap hotel comforter is rough on his skin. . He tugs off his underwear, tosses it in the same direction. It’s just him, now, on the bed, bare except for his scars and the marks of his trade.

The brand on his forearm aches.

The premise of the flick he buys is the stupidest goddamn thing he’s ever heard. Like, he’s dimly aware that he should be charmed by the idea of a dick-measuring census, but he’s too tired and tense to appreciate it. He just wants to get off, and the so-called plot needs to quit getting in the way of his damn porn. 

He toys with his dick a little just to get the blood moving. Onscreen, they’re finally getting around to the sex, and Dean is warming up to the way the camera loves to linger on the fabric of the census-taker’s panties where it clings to her. He can make out how ass and thigh and pussy come together. He wants to nuzzle that mound, breathe it in, and run his tongue across the fabric. 

He’d make her beg. He’d tease her so he could watch her clutch the sheets with her fingers and whimper. He’d make her squirm and growl until those panties were soaking wet with her juice and his spit. And then, just when she’s sure she can’t handle any more, he’d slip a couple of fingers in under the elastic and right inside her. 

She’d be so slick and wet, so hot on his hand, babbling horny gibberish about how she wants him to fuck that pussy while she grinds on his two, then three, then four fingers. 

He’d fuck her from behind, hard and fast, one hand to hold her in place, and one hand flat on her back, keeping her pinned to the mattress so he can control every thrust and angle while she comes apart underneath him, coming on his cock over and over again, squeezing him, shuddering and shaking and taking it until…

Dean grunts his climax through gritted teeth, milks himself with his fist, mostly catches everything in his hand and on his belly. He fumbles with his clean hand for the tissue box, wipes the worst of it away, and then sprawls on the bed. He feels sweaty and loose. Spent. 

Everything but the Mark on his arm.

He turns off the TV and burrows under the covers, slides his pistol under the pillow, and clicks off the light.

* * *

Mattoon is a bust – either some other hunter got there first, or the vetala are gone – but Bloomington is one hell of a fight. What looked like just one skinwalker on paper turns out to be three of them, and it’s basically dumb luck that Dean manages to take them all down. Yeah, he’s marginally well-rested and sharp and full of piss and vinegar, but it really is one of those moments he shouldn’t have been working alone. 

But hey, fuck it. Sam’s being a dick and Cas has shit to do, and this is just a holding pattern. It’s good practice for Abaddon.

He’s in Indy when he catches a John Doe on the wire that gets his attention. He’s not sure how he missed it the night before, but he loads up the Impala and heads to Wisconsin on a hunch. 

And yeah, it’s Garth, which means Sam shows up from god damn New Mexico of all places. And because it’s werewolves – okay, okay, _lycanthropes_ – everybody almost ends up dead, except Sam’s a damn pituitary mutant, and Dean understands how to hunt and save his brother’s ass.

So fuck it, he and Sam might each be damn good hunters in their own right, but they’re even better together, and he misses his brother. Sam might not think much of family right now, but Dean could honestly give a shit.

He’ll get over it. Sam always gets over it.

There’s nothing on the wire, so Dean turns them south, back toward Kansas. Sam is dozing before they cross a single county line, finally crashing out after the twenty-hour haul from New Mexico to Wisconsin, and probably the adrenaline. Dean lets him sleep. It’s just a five hour trip to Lebanon, and it’s peaceful.

Sam’s still out, arms crossed, head resting against the passenger door window when Dean pulls into the bunker’s garage. Asleep, Sam still looks like the kid Dean dragged away from college and back into the life. That kid should be married and living in a house and pulling 100k a year saving the whales or whatever it is guys who graduate from law school do. 

Instead, here he is.

“Hey,” Dean says, and bats at Sam’s shoulder. “Sammy. Get up. We’re home.”

Sam blinks, muzzy. “We were just in Wisconsin.”

“And now we’re not. Go to bed, man. I’ll get your stuff.”

Dean gathers up the bags. Sam’s he leaves in the hall by his brother’s bedroom door. His he drops at the foot of his own bed, then digs out his firearms kit and his pistol. Those he takes to the library.

He spreads the cloth out on the wood, flattens it with his palms like he’s ordering the universe. He pops the magazine, lets it fall into his hand, and then lays it aside before he pulls back the slide and checks the chamber. Empty. Good.

Field-stripping is meditation. His hands engage the safety, remove the bushing, and release the recoil spring plug essentially on their own. The slide comes away easily when he removes the stop. The barrel comes free from the slide. 

Some kids sang “Dem Bones.” He and Sammy had sung different songs.

The solvent stings his nose when he brushes out the barrel – ventilation is the only reason he does this out here instead of in his room – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t smell like home to him. The first (and last) time he’d cleaned a gun at Lisa’s kitchen table had been the first time he felt like he could belong there. He smiles, remembering how pissed she’d been at him for stinking up the house, and how she’d banished him to the garage and opened up all the windows. 

She’d liked the smell of _him_ well enough that night, though, all sweat and gun oil. He’d fallen asleep afterward with her in his arms, and woke up in the morning the same way, albeit with a sore shoulder and numb fingers, and not caring about anything but her and Ben, who wasn’t quite his son, but kind of was for a little while.

Dean’s gun slides together as perfectly as it came apart, everything snapping into its right place: precise, familiar, and deadly. They are weapons, him and it. Purpose-built to kill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perpetual thanks to 51stCenturyFox, my Iron Beta.
> 
> We're back in the canon material for a little bit, which is both frustrating and fantastic, mostly because I like filling in the gaps. This chapter mainly happens around "Sharp Teeth" (9x12). 
> 
> Title is a line from the Beatles song of the same name.


	5. Trade Your Heroes for Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still on the outs with Sam, Dean proposes a case. Instead of mending fences, though, the rift deepens. 
> 
> -
> 
> _Dean hits the shower the minute they check into the hotel in Stillwater. He stinks like sweat and booze, whore’s bath in Kansas or no. He takes his time scrubbing and gargling himself to acceptability, really digging into the whole “exfoliating” thing the shower gel apparently does._

Dean hits the shower the minute they check into the hotel in Stillwater. He stinks like sweat and booze, whore’s bath in Kansas or no. He takes his time scrubbing and gargling himself to acceptability, really digging into the whole “exfoliating” thing the shower gel apparently does.

Yeah, it’s passive-aggressive as hell, but he’s just spent ten hours in the car with Sam, who can’t seem to decide whether he’s doing awkward silence or actively being an asshole, and Dean wants some privacy. If his brother has a problem with waiting an extra twenty minutes to take a leak – and Sammy _is_ his brother, even if he’s an idiot who needs to get over his shit – he can go suck a bag of dicks.

When he finally dries off and strides back into the hotel room, towel around his waist, he feels pretty good about himself. Pruney fingers have never been so viscerally satisfying. And sure, okay, Sam completely fails to react, which is maybe a lot less satisfying, but Dean shoves that disappointment aside in favor of getting into his fed gear. 

Nothing like a case to knock some sense into things. 

* * *

It turns out to be a weird damn case.

Like, first there’s the competitive eating thing, with the lettuce, and the deep-fried butter – and, okay, he’d do that to satisfy his own morbid curiosity, because how does that even work? – and then there’s the Romnichal chick who turns out to be married to their suspect, but having an affair with their vic, and into some kind of benevolent folk magic. 

So there’s a change.

Then there’s the undercover gig at the spa retreat, which is a special kind of Hell that Sam is entirely too into, and at the end of the day their big bad turns out to be something Dean’s never heard of before. Given how long he and his brother have been at this, it’s an achievement.

Speaking of achievements, if anyone starts handing out prizes to people for being more sympathetic to goddamn monsters than they are to their own brothers, Sammy’s a frontrunner for sure.

* * *

The drive home is a shit-show. Sam wants to stay overnight in Stillwater, but Dean is about four hundred percent done with this case, and a ten hour drive is a Band-Aid worth ripping off if it’ll get him somewhere he can drink in peace.

Sam grumbles something about “stubborn” and “stupid” and Dean shoots back that he got plenty of sleep on the roofies, thanks, and instead of a fight it just peters out into silence. Like, what, Sam’s too good to fight him now? Fine, he can work with that. 

Dean takes solace in the road, and the company of _Led Zeppelin II_. 

* * *

They get home at what is probably an irrational hour – Lebanon’s dead, anyway – and they unload with a minimum of conversation. 

It’s better this way. Dean’s raw with exhaustion to the point he’s starting to forget his eyes aren’t supposed to ache all the time. He’s pushing past bone tired on a regular basis these days, like he needs the marathon to sleep. 

But hey, he’d promised himself that drink. 

It’s quiet in the kitchen. More and more, this is his place. This spot at the table, this bottle and glass, it’s as obvious a fit for him as Sammy is for the library, living with the books and artifacts the Men of Letters collected like he really could have been one of them. Dean, well… 

Well, maybe the universe had a sick sense of humor and he’d gotten the hairnet at Canyon Valley for the same reason Dean can’t imagine being anything other than a hunter. Talk about disappointing the family.

Sam’s the one who breaks the peace. It starts easy enough, and then goes directly to hell because between the fatigue and the liquor Dean has to call out the elephant in the room: it’s three times over now Sam should be dead, but he sure ain’t bitching about the last two. 

It’s a hell of a way to find out Sammy doesn’t even have his back anymore. And shit, Dean doesn’t know what to believe.

He leaves the bottle and the glass on the table. It’s like he can’t get out of the kitchen fast enough, like the silence is closing in on him all of a sudden and he needs to get out, needs to get away. Out through the library, the war room, out of the bunker entirely and out across the road out into the woods where every crack of a twig is like being at war again and he’s got his knife in his hand and he’s ready to fight because _that is what he is good for_.

Breathing. He’s breathing. 

Dean rests his hand on a tree, lets himself slide down onto the cold, hard earth beneath him. His face is wet and he’s shaking. On his arm, the Mark stings. His knife is on the ground, clean. Above him, there are stars. He stares at them, and they’re blurry through the tears, and he wishes they didn’t hurt so much to look at. He wishes stars could be beautiful again. He just wants everything to stop.

Maybe Sammy’s right. Maybe he’s just a fuck-up and a coward. 

He dials his phone without clear intent, like he’s lost his soul, like he’s just doing it because his hands need a thing to do. 

“Dean.”

“Hey Cas.” Dean winces. His voice is too broken to go unnoticed. “How’s it going out there, man?”

“It is…proceeding.” 

Dean feels his back start to relax a little. The familiar cadence of Castiel’s voice and the way he pauses, like he still hasn’t figured out how to talk to people is like a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He feels himself smile. It’s a tentative thing, fragile, but it warms him. 

“How are you, Dean?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, shrugging as if Cas can see him. “The usual. Just got in from a job. Probably shouldn’t have made the whole drive at once, but I’ll live.”

Another pause. “Perhaps you should rest?”

“Yeah, probably.” He rests his head back against the tree’s rough bark. “Not gonna lie, it’s been a long couple of days.”

With anyone else, the silence on the line would worry him. Instead, the silence is comforting. Dean’s got literally no idea where Cas is, but over the phone like this he still feels close.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

Dean’s breath catches. “For what?” 

“For before. In your room. It was…presumptuous.”

Dean swallows, closes his eyes. God, he’s so tired. This…thing, whatever it is? With Cas? He can’t even touch the weight of it right now. He’s all tapped out. “Don’t worry about it. It’s…it is what it is, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Dean repeats, because that’s what he needs it to be. Okay. “Look, I should let you go. I’m beat. It was good to hear your voice.”

“Yours too.”

Dean pockets his phone, picks up his knife. The walk back to the road and the bunker is longer than he expects, but that might just be exhaustion overtaking the last of the adrenaline.

He forces himself to shower. He’s not even sure where he finds the strength to get to his bed, but he burrows down under the blankets, curled up tight against himself. 

He drifts off with his own hand on his cheek and forgets that he’s alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goodness, it's odd to post an installment without some new flavor of sex in it. I feel like I should just change the title of this overall work to "Dean Winchester is working his way down the list to the kitchen sink," but that's possibly a very different piece, Er. 
> 
> Any similarity between this chapter between the events of 9x13 (The Purge) is absolutely not coincidental. 
> 
> Thanks as always to 51st Century Fox, beta extraordinaire with magnificent hair. 
> 
> Title from "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd, which might be the most apt soundtrack for this installment possible.


	6. Burn Out the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Struggling with the Mark and the current state of affairs with Sam, Dean reaches out to Castiel.

Sam’s right about one thing. There is something broken between them. 

Long silences and cool civility aren’t necessarily new. They’re brothers, and brothers fight, and Sam has always been the kind of guy to shut up and fume instead of throwing punches. He’s never done it this long, or this intensely, but Dean would probably be able to accept it more easily if it weren’t for the way Sam has started to walk out out on him mid-conversation. 

The fifth time it happens – which probably means it’s the seventh or eighth time it’s happened, since sometimes he does it when Dean isn’t looking -- Dean storms after him. 

“What the hell, man?” he shouts down the hall. Sam doesn’t say a damn thing. Doesn’t even look back at him. 

Dean bloodies his knuckles punching the wall when Sam’s door clicks shut.

And he’s trying. He’s reaching out because they’re all each other has left, and no matter how little Sam thinks of family right now, Dean’s not going to let that go.

Nothing changes. Nothing works. The brokenness between them is like a ghost, except he can’t fight down with some rock salt, some lighter fluid, and a Zippo. 

“I miss him,” Dean confides to Castiel over the phone. He’s never been one to talk about his feelings, but this is killing him, and at least Cas talks back. “We’re supposed to keep each other human.”

Dean rubs absently at the Mark on his arm. He hasn’t told Cas about that, yet. 

“Should I –“ Cas starts to say, but Dean turns down the offer to intercede before it’s fully made.

“He likes you, man. I don’t want to fuck that up.”

“Okay.”

* * *

They’re short conversations at first, his calls with Cas, but they’re becoming routine. Usually Dean will rattle off a quick prayer to see if Cas has his ears on, and then wait for the phone to ring. Other times – when he’s ready to come apart – he’ll just dial and hope that Cas is somewhere he can answer.

Dean’s a drowning man, desperate. Cas pulls him back to the shore.

* * *

“So if you had your wings, where would you go?”

Dean can practically hear Castiel’s puzzled frown on the other end. “Why would I go somewhere?”

“I don’t know. Because you can?” Dean stretches out on the back seat of the Impala. He’s parked at the end of a gravel road that’s not much more than a trail. Above him, the night sky glitters. A radio tower pulses red on the horizon. “I mean, come on. You’re not always where you want to be, right?”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“So where would you go?”

“Wherever Metatron is.”

Dean snorts. Of course that’s what Cas would say. 

“I don’t understand what’s funny about my answer, Dean. I genuinely do want to find Metatron.”

“Because when people ask questions like that, man, they’re not being practical. They’re, I don’t know, fantasizing.”

“So you’d like me to…fantasize?”

Dean’s mouth goes dry. He adjusts his jeans. “Uh, no. That’s okay, Cas. Hey, I gotta go.”

He shoves his phone in his shirt pocket and rubs his face, willing his dick to calm the fuck down, already. His dick doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge that memo. In fact, his dick is obstinately focused on drafting its own memo about how fucking hot the word “fantasize” sounds when it comes out of Castiel’s mouth.

And yeah, Dean has definitely had a few fantasies about that mouth. His skin flushes, half arousal, half angry shame.

He squeezes his hard-on through his jeans and lets out a slow breath. He’s alone out here, and if he keeps his head clear and doesn’t slip up and start praying he can get this out of his system without anyone else having to know. 

Except, you know, how hot would that be? 

Dean undoes his belt, pops the button of his jeans, and shoves them down his thighs. He runs his hand up his shaft slowly and cups the head in his palm. Would Cas even get anything out of it if he prayed while he did this? Would it be like watching somebody jerk off? Phone sex? A disembodied magic handjob?

Dean’s had some pretty mind-blowing calls to 900 numbers in his day. He likes to think it could be at least that good. 

He reaches down with his left hand and plays with his balls while he works his cock, experimenting with shifting his grip, flipping between overhand and underhand on the up-stroke. 

What if Cas knew, every single time, when Dean thought about him sexually? What would phone sex with Cas be like? How would it feel to have Cas sitting in the front seat of the Impala, jerking off while he watches Dean put on a show for him in the back?

Oh yeah. He likes the idea of Cas hot and hungry, panting, watching and wanting.

Dean pushes his shirt up with his left hand, baring more skin to the night air, and pretending to put on a show. There’s no reason to stifle a moan, so he doesn’t. Instead he writhes, lascivious, and trails his fingers across his chest. Dean wants to feel like he’s being touched, yeah, but he’s also getting off on feeling like a slut, too. He rocks his hips, arches, bares his throat. His left hand traces down his jaw and over his Adam’s apple and he grasps his throat lightly. 

Castiel could put his hand there. He could take Dean by the throat if he wanted to, Old Testament angel strong, all power of life and death. He imagines Cas holding him down, overpowering him, and taking what he wants.

Dean’s breath catches, and he bites his lip hard enough he nearly draws blood when he comes. He sprawls there, supine and panting in the back of his car. There’s a pool of jizz on his stomach, and he tries not to get his shirt in it when he reaches for the roll of shop towels in the floorboard. He almost manages, but gets a smear on the cotton anyway, close to the bottom hem. 

He can probably cover that up with his jacket if Sam’s up and around when he gets back to the bunker. Or fuck it. He can just lie and say that it’s food. And wow, that isn’t even close to the biggest piece of what-the-fuck in the last ten minutes, but Dean has to give himself points for being detail-oriented in the moment.

So yeah, jerking off to Cas? Pretty fucked up, but given recent precedent Dean can probably justify the guy being in the spank bank. Anyway, people get twisted when they limit shit. The voyeurism stuff? Maybe a little fucked up, but not really. Hell, everybody’s into that.

Cas holding him down and fucking him, though, is maybe a fifty on a ten point scale. Like, okay, sure he’s jerked off to the idea of a bunch of girls throwing a cruelty party on him more times than he can count – and that admittedly is a function of both wishful thinking and how often he jerks off – but Dean has been physically overpowered enough times in his life to know it _isn’t_ sexy, that he does _not_ want it, and that the idea makes him physically tense. 

_Yeah, but people get twisted when they limit shit_ , he thinks, and his mouth goes sour with anxiety. 

Dean wriggles back into his clothes, moves to the front seat, and jams his key into the ignition. 

* * *

“So when are you hitting Kansas next?” Dean asks. He pops the last piece of bacon from his plate into his mouth. Lebanon’s got a killer diner, like small towns always do. He’s turning into a regular.

He’d like to bring Cas here, but having him on the phone is close enough for now.

“I’m not sure. The signs, the incidents, they’re…ambiguous. Things are quiet. The trail is cold.” 

“Yeah, tell me about it. Scanner’s been dead for a week up here, too.” He smiles, thanks the waitress who tops up his coffee. She’s a nice, older lady, like the grandma he never had. “Makes me nervous.”

“It is strange how anticipation can make silence more off-putting than conflict.”

“Yeah, amen to that.”

Dean massages the Mark with his thumb. He’s been thinking about the blade, lately. Wondering what’s taking Crowley so damn long. The longer he waits, the more things feel…itchy. 

“Anyway, I know this is your fight, but if I can help you out, man, just say the word.”

“Thank you, Dean.”

“Hey you remember that time I tried to get you laid, and instead you did some kind of angel background check on that girl and got us thrown out?” Dean worries at the handle of his coffee mug. It’s a nervous gesture, but he’s out of food and wants something to do with his hands.

Castiel pauses. “Yes.”

“You ever do one of those on me?”

“Yes,” Cas says, utterly without hesitation, like it’s the most reasonable thing in the world.

“Oh.” Dean swallows. He stares into his coffee. “Okay.”

“I pulled your soul out of Hell. That kind of intervention is inherently intimate.”

“Yeah, they really know how to personalize down there.” Dean puts his utensils on his empty plate, pushes it away. He hides the ketchup with his napkin and pretends it doesn’t remind him of anything.

“Why did you want to know?”

Dean sighs. Oh what the hell. “Nebraska. And the other thing.”

“The incident with the pornography.”

“Yeah.”

Castiel inhales. “You’re uncomfortable with me knowing that you –“

“Please don’t finish that sentence, Cas.” Dean looks around the restaurant. “I’m not that guy. I can choose, and I chose, and that’s how it is.”

Cas is silent. 

“Look, you don’t believe me, go back through that mental Rolodex and tell me I didn’t choose.”

More silence.

“Cas, you there?”

Castiel answers slowly, like he’s considering his words very carefully. “I am surprised Famine did not think to use this against you.”

“Dude, there is a massive difference between….between that stuff and a bunch of hamburgers.”

“Obviously.”

“And I wasn’t denying myself anything then, for a start. Things were working fine.”

“Oh? Then why are we having this conversation?”

“Because –“ and Dean stops short, because what can he say? That now he is denying himself, and that he wants reassurance that this feeling will go away because it’s knotting him up when he’s got Sam and Abaddon to worry about? “Because...you know why.”

“No, Dean, I don’t.”

Dean closes his eyes and swallows. 

_“Dean.”_

“Because it quit working, Cas, okay?” Dean drops a twenty on the table and waves to the waitress on his way out. She waves back, bemused but not upset. He’s left in a hurry before. “Maybe it did a while ago. I’m a mess, man.”

“What do you want me to do?”

 _Come to Kansas_ , Dean thinks as he unlocks the door to the Impala and gets in. _Nail me to my goddamn mattress until I forget how to walk_.

“I don’t know. Tell me I’m an idiot? That this is just a blip and I’ll get over it? You’ve seen inside my skull. You figure it out.” He sticks the keys in the ignition but doesn’t start the car. 

“You want me to lie to you.”

Dean flinches. “What? No.”

“Good. I prefer not to be dishonest with you.” Cas says sharply. “It’s been nice talking with you, Dean. I should go.”

He starts to say, “Wait, Cas--” but the silence of the ended call comes too fast. 

 

* * *

Same kitchen. Same table. New bottle of Jim Beam because he’s feeling frisky. 

Sam walks in, and his expression sours quick when he sees the bottle. They’ve managed about two days not seeing each other, but apparently he’s been saving up the venom. “Wow, Dean. How’s that merit badge for cirrhosis coming along?”

“Lay off, Sammy,” he grumbles. He feels worn thin, like an old blanket.

“What, you get to have an opinion about me getting killed, but I can’t call you on it when you’re busy killing yourself?”

“I said _lay off._ ”

“Fine. Whatever,” Sam snaps and turns away. “Not my funeral.”

The knife in his pocket feels heavy. He watches Sam gather ingredients from the fridge and add oil to a skillet. 

It could be quick. They’re alone. Dean’s knives are always sharp. The Mark on his arm aches. Dean grits his teeth and presses his thumb into it hard. 

_No. Not him. Not ever. I’ll kill myself first._

The ache subsides, like pins and needles, but doesn’t fully abate. Dean raises the glass of bourbon to his lips, swallows it fast, then slams it down on the table. It cracks and slices into his palm. The blood blooms from the wound before he even feels the sting of the cut. He lets go of the shards and looks at his hand dumbly, booze-dulled and shocked. 

Blood runs down his hand, drips onto the table surface. “Son of a –“

Sam tosses a dish towel onto the table, and gives him a withering look as if to say _what the hell is wrong with you? You can’t even drink right_.

Dean wraps his hand in the towel and puts pressure on the wound. He’s bleeding pretty freely thanks to the bourbon, and it’s a mess. Both hands are smudged with it now, fingers sticky with red. He gets up and fumbles for the kitchen first aid kit with his left hand. He carries it to the sink. 

“Little help here?”

Sam sighs. He moves the skillet off the burner and switches it off. “Let me see.”

Dean holds still and watches Sam peel away the towel and rinse the cut. It isn’t deep, thank god. Sam folds up a second towel and pushes it down against Dean’s palm. “Hold that,” he says, and fishes around in the kit for gauze and tape. 

He patches Dean up with skilled hands, and with far more gentleness than Dean expects from him, considering. 

“There,” Sam says, securing the bandage. “Now just…I don’t know, go to bed or something. I’ll clean up the glass.”

“Yeah, okay.” Dean cradles his injured hand and turns away. Bed is probably a good idea. Maybe he’s tired enough now he can get his four hours. 

If not, well, there’s always the flask in his drawer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is only by 51stCenturyFox, my Iron Beta, that I set my hand in motion.
> 
> Title is from "Burnin' For You" by Blue Oyster Cult. Chapter takes place between "The Purge" and "Captives," because there is time for it. Yes.
> 
> If you don't know what a "cruelty party" is, think of it as kind of a "reverse gangbang" in which a group of women objectifies and uses a man instead of the other way around. You're welcome.


	7. I've Seen the Future and Left it Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dean's wound over Kevin is reopened, the Mark becomes a secret, and Dean has a dream.

His heart breaks all over again when Kevin flickers into view, but Dean doesn’t know which of a hundred reasons hurts the most. He’s a hunter, and he knows it’s always better not to wish to see a friend again (hell, screw that, Kevin was _family_ , another little brother smarter than him, but that just means not-wishing should go double) but Dean’s a human being. 

It hurts. It’s a miracle and it’s horrible and it hurts.

They go off to find Kevin’s mom when he asks because it’s Kevin, and he’s got to want it bad if he’s fought his way through through the veil that fast. And yeah, Dean’s still pretty sure that Crowley was lying, and that this is going to be the broken thing in Kevin’s spirit that turns him bad sooner or later, but Dean still owes him the benefit of the doubt. 

He owes it to the kid to try, even if it’s going to be bad news.

Linda Tran runs a close second on the list of terrible miracles. On the one hand, it’s not news to Dean that he lives in a world so fallen as this, where people get kidnapped and kept in freaking storage units. Human beings don’t even need demons to be that shitty to each other. What kicks his ass is that the minute he sees Ms. Tran alive he remembers every single time he dissuaded Kevin from looking.

She’s been here this whole time, literally all of three hours away. Practically under their noses. And he didn’t help. He just assumed she was gone, and told Kevin to give up, over and over.

He deserves her rage, her hatred, her blame. She should be breaking every bone in his body with a hammer for what he’s done to her, and how he failed her son. Instead, Ms. Tran is kind. She loves her son, dead or not, and she’s here to take him home, even if the only tangible part of him is heavy gold ring that also belonged to her dead husband. 

Kevin’s only piece of his father, carrying Ms. Tran’s only piece of her husband. 

Dean doesn’t understand how she can be so kind to him. 

Later, in his room, after the goodbyes and Sam winning the land speed record for breaking promises to dead friends, Dean gets to thinking about a little town in Minnesota that got caught in the crossfire of the apocalypse, back when he and Sam were trying to outrace Lucifer and the angels. A whole little town of hunters, except they had the Whore of Babylon running the show. Blue something, with a little militia running out of the church.

There was a kid there. 

Dean remembers the hunt, clearing out a pack of demons with the locals and being glad for the back-up, even if he didn’t trust it. After, he and Sam agreed to give the kid a ride back. Tossed him a beer, even, just before the demon hiding right under his damn car grabbed the kid’s ankles and murdered him right then and there.

Dean can’t remember that kid’s name, and it should eat at him. Does, in an angry way. He should know that name. Hell, there are a lot of names he should probably know. Enough to fill a library. It’s not like he’s the only one with red in his ledger, either. If there’s one thing the Winchester family business is good for, it’s leaving a trail of bodies. 

Hell, Sammy literally started the Apocalypse once. Dean remembers that loud and clear. He remembers the 2014 that wasn’t, too, and Camp Chitaqua. He remembers watching Lucifer end a Dean Winchester he isn’t with the sole of a white leather shoe.

And obviously this is better. This 2014 that he’s really having, right now, is worlds better. No Croatoan, no seals, no little towns gone crazy. No end of the world. Yeah, okay, Sam did some time possessed by a murderous angel, but Gadreel? Not Lucifer. Not by a long shot. Dean should at least get to feel some pride that no matter what that son of a bitch had said to him in the garden that they did not, in fact, wind up there after all. Most of his friends are dead, sure, but hey. It’s not the end of the world. 

Well, unless you a bunch of fallen angels causing collateral damage and Abaddon’s plan to bring Hell back up to spec, but frankly, he’s seen worse. Hell was worse, for a start.

So maybe the creeping rage under the pain isn’t so bad. Maybe the way the blood roars in his ears sometimes these days isn’t so bad. Maybe it just makes sense to stop worrying and love the bomb, give up on his brother, take up arms, and –

His phone buzzes in his pocket and Dean hesitates for a second before pulling off his headphones and raising it to his year. “Yeah?”

“Dean.”

“Cas.” 

They haven’t spoken since the diner, and this new feeling says he’s better for that. That Castiel just makes things complicated. That Castiel will turn on him eventually – no, _again_ – just like Sam.

“I was wondering if you, ah, had your ears on.”

It’s a strange reversal, and Dean scoffs quietly. The anger begins to recede, like it’s sinking to the bottom of a black lake. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s going on?” 

“Bartholomew is dead.”

“Bartholomew? The Buddy Boyle guy?” Dean sits up. “That’s good news, right?”

Castiel sighs.

“Cas, the guy was out to get you. How is this not good news?”

“I’m tired, Dean,” Castiel says in a voice so soft Dean wonders for a second if there’s a problem with the connection. “I am tired of fighting my brothers and sisters. But every time I try to stop, another faction rises. I’ve killed so many angels, Dean.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s throat feels dry. He recognizes the pain in Castiel’s voice. He’s heard it in his own enough times. He’s heard it from Cas once as well. The other one. In 2014.

_We always end up here._

Dean listens to Castiel’s breath. He wishes he could put a hand on his shoulder, give him a little comfort. “You can stay here, Cas. If you need to stop.”

“I can’t stop, Dean. Malachi is still trying to amass a force, and I’m no closer to finding Metatron.” 

_Join the club_ , he thinks, and clenches his jaw. Dean would be out there too instead of stuck in this place if Crowley would just answer his damn phone. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

And so they talk. Well, Cas talks. Dean listens. Cas has done the same for him, this act of bearing witness while Dean tries to pour out his poison. 

It takes a long time. 

The Mark burns like a dirty secret through it all, like it knows it has the power to end these moments, to rip back the mask of Dean’s kindness – he is weak, afraid, pathetic, lonely, anything but kind – and bare his sins to all, including Castiel. _Especially_ Castiel. This secret would be a knife to Cas’ heart, especially now that he’s opened up his ribs like this to Dean. Trust was a mistake.

Eventually, silence. 

“Thank you,” Cas says finally. 

“Yeah, don’t mention it.” He checks the clock. He’s been up well over 24 hours. “Cas, I need to go. Are you going to be alright?” 

“Yes. I…I believe so, yes.”

“Okay.” Dean leans down to undo his boots. He’ll sleep in his clothes, but the boots need to go. “You call me if anything changes. If we can help –“

“I will. Thank you.”

His eyes close the minute his head hits the pillow.

* * *

The room is his but it’s wrong, an amalgamation of dingy hotel rooms, his bedroom in the bunker, and some half-remembered details from the house he should have grown up in. 

Then again, it’s not the architecture he’s focused on. 

Castiel is on his lap, riding him. It’s all so sudden – no lead up, no anything, just boom, and here he is mid-sex – and Dean almost yelps at how tight and good this feels. He gapes up at Cas, as stunned as any human being in the presence of an angel, except that Cas’ body is flushed and tangible, and he’s stroking his own hard-on while he grinds on Dean’s cock.

He’s just lucid enough in his dream to be surprised about the mechanics of the sex he’s having – he’s never considered this particular way of arranging two male bodies – but he’s enjoying it too much to question. He likes this moment. It’s all smooth sheets and warm, naked skin.

If Cas were a woman, Dean would reach up to play with her nipples. He’d cup and squeeze and play around with her breasts. Instead, he runs his hands up Cas’ thighs and digs in where hip meets thigh. He wants leverage. He wants thrust.

Above him, Castiel starts making these breathless little noises, like having Dean inside him is the most amazing thing. His eyes are lust-dark and dreamy, and when Dean starts to move his own hips to complement Castiel’s own movements, Cas' eyelids actually flutter. 

He murmurs something Dean doesn’t quite catch – it might not even be in English – and reaches out with his right hand to brush at Dean’s face with his fingertips. He runs his hands up and down Dean’s chest, flat palmed, then scratches down his skin just hard enough to make Dean hiss and buck up even harder. 

Cas moans, guttural and wild. There’s no shame in him, no restraint, and it’s quite possibly the hottest thing Dean has ever seen in his life. 

“More,” Cas whispers. “More, more, more. Dean. Yes. _More_.”

Dean gives Cas more. He digs his hands in hard enough that his fingers actually ache and pounds up with his hips, teeth gritted. He’s aware, somewhere in the deeper recesses of his mind, that this would hurt anyone but Castiel. Hell, it ought to be hurting _him_. Cas, meanwhile, is gripping Dean’s shoulder where his handprint used to be. 

It’s a possessive touch, and Cas’ hands are strong. Dean wants it to leave a mark. 

He’s so close now. Right on the edge. Just a little more and –

* * *

_“Fuck!”_

Dean jolts awake, clutching his forearm, the pain from the Mark like a hot knife in his flesh. He balls up instinctively, protecting his aching arm, strangling a cry in his throat. He jams his thumb into the flesh, clenching his jaw. He bites his lip by accident, and can taste blood in his mouth.

Fiber by fiber, the pain unknots like a charley horse. He flexes his hand slow, opening and closing it. He feels sick, slicked with sweat, and his jeans –

“ _Son of a bitch_ ,” he grumbles at nobody in particular. If he’s going to hurt and lose sleep like this, he should at least be able to enjoy a happy ending. 

He opens up the trunk at the foot of his bed and pulls out some clean clothes, feels the red tendrils rising in him. He needs a shower, and some liquor, and then Crowley needs to answer his goddamn phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I secretly have a ten-year pact with 51st Century Fox. One day, all of the beta she gives me will come due. On that day, I intend to go down with a drink in my hand and enough porn to distract her while I evade her hellhounds.
> 
> Title is from "Supernaut" by Black Sabbath. 
> 
> All resemblance to episode 9x14 (Captives) is purely intentional. Likewise, all references to 5x04 (The End) and 5x17 (99 Problems). Look, if I watch nine years worth of television, I'm going to take advantage of the richness of that material, okay?


	8. The Power and the Kill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One 25 hour cross-country haul, one wounded Ghostfacer, and one trip down to the strip club for some R&R. Occurs after 9x15 (#THINMAN).

To say that Dean has something of an edge on this psycho busboy is an understatement. Oh sure, that’s an ugly knife he’s toting, and he and his little law enforcement buddy fight dirty, but Dean has literally spent his entire life surviving. 

This guy wants him dead? Yeah, good luck with that. This wiry little punk can be pumped on adrenaline all he wants. Dean knows how to turn a weapon against an assailant, and he does it with extreme prejudice. Even a sharp knife needs a little bit of force, though, to punch into a human body. Especially through all that costume fabric. 

Dean gives the blade a good jerk and feels the blade rip home. The body in his arms goes limp.

The deputy almost gives them trouble -- dude is wily, Dean will give him that much -- but there’s no arguing with a well-placed bullet. It shouldn’t have been Harry’s bullet, but Dean wasn’t going to let Norwood out alive anyway, and he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Afterward, Dean takes Harry’s gun and hangs back to survey the remains of the struggle. It’s a messy scene -- too many feet, too many prints -- but he can at least confuse the evidence, and it’s not like he’s particularly concerned about CSI: Springdale if they missed the _actual serial killer_ in the Sheriff’s Department. Hell, that’s probably embarrassing enough for the locals; it’ll probably work to Dean’s advantage. 

When he emerges from the mill, Sam seems less satisfied with the overall state of affairs. For Sam, two clean kills and no trouble is still a problem if those kills are people, apparently. Dean says something to the effect of people being sick and lets Sam’s disapproval roll off for once. 

They had a couple of good moments tonight, and Sammy even had his back. Dean’s not in a hurry to screw that up, even if ganking those two wastes of skin should be the most logical thing in the world. Some freaks want to pretend to be monsters? Fine. Let them die like monsters.

When Harry asks them for a ride, Dean doesn’t turn away. The guy is stranded, and whatever Dean might think about him personally, it doesn’t seem right to just leave him out here, especially given that he just shot a man.

Like, he can do without the maudlin break-up talk – too close to the bone – but Harry eventually shuts up about it. 

“Where are we taking you, anyway?” Dean asks, breaking the silence. “Like, where do you live?”

“Wisconsin.”

Sam’s eyebrows rise, and Dean exchanges a brief look with him as if to ask if they’re really going to pull a haul like that with Harry riding along. 

“Okay, then. I-90 it is.”

* * *

Dean starts to hit his limit partway through Montana. They stop at a dingy motor inn about an hour past Missoula, one room for him and Sam, and one for Harry, and are back on the road just before lunchtime. 

Harry, not surprisingly, mostly keeps to himself. He’s in a pretty deep funk, curled up on himself in the back seat with his iPod, staring out the window. Every so often he winces and touches his stomach where he got cut.

Dean knows he’ll be okay. Sam’s a pretty good field medic, and the cut was mostly superficial. It’s gonna leave a hell of a scar, but that’s not the mark Dean’s worried about. He rubs absently at his forearm and glances at Harry in the rearview. 

It’s well dark by the time Dean stops them again in Bismarck and finds another little inn on the edge of town. He drops Sam and Harry off to let them get situated, and then circles back to the gas station to fill his tank and pick up some necessities.

Sam’s just coming out of Harry’s room when Dean pulls into the parking lot with a bag of snacks, some first aid supplies, and a bottle of Jack. Dean hands Sam the bag, takes the bottle, and pushes into Harry’s room. 

“You gonna live?” He asks on his way to Harry’s bathroom. He picks up two of the three individually-wrapped plastic drinking cups off of the counter, then brings them back into the room. 

Harry shrugs. “Sam says I’ll be fine.”

“You believe him?”

Dean sits down on the other bed. He sets the bottle down on the nightstand and unwraps the cups. Harry shrugs.

“Yeah, me neither.” Dean pours himself a double, pours Harry half as much. When Harry gives him an irritated look, Dean shrugs and pours the guy an equal measure and passes him the cup. 

Dean tries not to smile at the ridiculous face Harry makes when he tastes the liquor.

“So. You shot a guy. How’s that sitting with you?”

“It sucks.”

Dean nods. “Not what you expected, huh?”

Harry shakes his head and makes another attempt at his whiskey. The face he makes isn’t quite as bad the second time, so Dean’s going to be generous and give him points for effort.

“Yeah, well good. It shouldn’t be.” Dean pulls Harry’s gun out of the back of his waistband. He’s already unloaded it and stowed the ammo in the Impala’s weapons box, but he’s never been one to leave a guy unarmed. “You want this back?”

“No. Man, I can’t even with that thing.”

Dean’s brows knot in confusion. “You can’t what?”

“Nevermind. Just, keep the…the thing.”

“Suit yourself.” Dean tucks the gun back into his waistband and swallows more than a sip of his whiskey without almost no trace of a grimace. “If you’re wondering why we’ve always been assholes to you guys, this is pretty much it, by the way.”

Harry chuckles bitterly. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, we’re getting you home. And when we leave you there, I’m going to give you a phone number. You are going to swear that you’re not going to use that number for anything except this conversation, and that you will use it when it’s time to talk about what went down back there. Got it?”

“Yeah.” Harry nods. 

“Good.” Dean stands up. He downs the rest of his whiskey and leaves the plastic cup on the nightstand. The bottle he takes back with him to his and Sam’s room. 

Sam’s sitting on one of the beds with his laptop. When Dean walks in he looks up, gives the bottle a questioning look. “So what was that about? You planning on inducting Harry into the International Order of Hunters or something?”

Dean drops Harry’s gun on his bed. “I don’t think he’s leaning that way. He’s pretty messed up about shooting the deputy.”

“Well, he should be.” 

“Of course he should be. He’s a kid from the suburbs with no killer instinct.” Those last two words are hot lead on his tongue, and while he didn’t really intend to say them out loud. He sees Sam’s eyes narrow a little. “What?”

“That’s your reason he should be upset? That he’s not wired to shoot people?”

“Sammy, the guy had a gun on you. He was helping his friend murder people. His friend who, by the way, was going to kill me in front of you. Harry took the shot and saved you and Ed both.” He crosses the room and picks up a plastic cup. “Just because the guy didn’t have fangs or claws or whatever doesn’t mean it was wrong.”

Sam raises his palms, gesturing surrender. “Fine.”

“Fine.” He tears the cup wrapper open with his teeth and pulls it off, then sets the cup on the nightstand. He reaches over for the bottle and catches Sam rolling his eyes. “What?”

Sam turns his attention back to his laptop. “Nothing.”

“Christ,” Dean grumbles and puts down the cup and moves toward the door. “Screw this. I’m going out.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, but Dean can feel his brother’s disapproving glare burn into his back as he pockets his key to the room and walks out. He considers taking the car, but there’s a strip club half a block north that he saw on his way back from the convenience store, and if he goes on foot he doesn’t have to worry about whether he’s too drunk to drive back. 

* * *

He hits the ATM harder than he probably should, pulls out a couple hundred, and has the guy at the door break about fifty of it down into fives, a hundred into tens. He opens a tab at the bar with a prepaid card and then finds a seat close enough to the stage he can get a good view, but not so close he’ll be wasting his time and money on pervert’s row.

The whiskey barely burns him anymore. The thrum of the bass just is. It’s not like he doesn’t feel, because he does. Pain, mostly. Guilt and shame, though that’s off-limits tonight. Anger. Lust. He flexes his forearm only half-intentionally, and the Mark’s there. It’s good in a way, he thinks, to have a visible symbol of his damnation on his skin. It’s like people around him forget that he’s spent more time in Hell and Purgatory than he’s spent being alive. 

Maybe it’s going to be a relief when he burns.

“I like your jacket.”

Dean inhales and leans in a little to the soft touch of fingers on his shoulder. “Used to have a nicer one. Leather.”

“Mm,” the girl says, and steps into better view. “You’d look good in leather. I like this too, though. Military, kind of. You in the military?”

“Yeah,” he says. It’s not a lie that he's a soldier, but not the way she thinks. Either way, it’s easier for her to think he’s an airman stationed out of Minot or Grand Forks. He slips her a five from his jacket pocket and she smiles at him. Her eyes are piercing blue, sharp like Castiel’s.

Actually, it’s not a bad comparison. This girl could be Jimmy Novak’s bad little sister, maybe kind of angular in the shoulders but filled out nice, dark hair cut in a grown-out bob that brushes her shoulders. She’s rocking the lingerie, a black see-through thing with the world’s least effective imitation of a skirt. Garter belt. Hose with a seam up the back. 

Dean leans back and welcomes her onto his lap. She sits on his thigh, legs crossed, one arm draped over his. “You want to buy me a drink?”

“No.” He licks his bottom lip. “I’d rather pay you than the house.”

“Yeah?” she says, arching a dark brow, leans in on him so she can whisper in his ear. She’s pretty heavily made up, but Dean can tell it’s not because she isn’t pretty. This is more like art. “You want a dance?”

“How much?”

“Twenty here, forty in the room.”

He passes her thirty and feels his dick give a pre-emptive twitch when she practically purrs against him and nuzzles his throat. She plays with his hair a little, waits for the next song to start. This is extra, Dean knows. Might just be good hospitality, but might be more, too, if he’s lucky and willing to spend. Whatever it is, though, it feels good and he lets it ride. 

When the song starts, she slips off of his lap, then leans down and presses her hands to his knees to spread his legs a little.

“What’s your name?” she asks, bending down to ask the question against his two-day stubble. 

He doesn’t hesitate to lie, now. “Jake.”

Her body sways to the music, some song he doesn’t know. “Mm. I like you, Jake. You smell good.” She bends her knees to crouch between his legs and runs her hands up from his knees to his thighs. She grins. “I like your jeans.”

“You can try ‘em on if you want,” he jokes. No, wait, it’s not a joke at all. She’d be hot in them, actually, battered denim riding those hips low. Those jeans and nothing else, bare skin against his armor. 

She must like his answer well enough because she straddles his leg and puts her arms around his neck and grinds against the denim. Every movement of her torso is exaggerated, hips and shoulders and back all moving in a larger than life imitation of sex. He watches, shameless, enjoying the show. Hell, enjoying being part of the show. He catches one of the dancers watching, even, and he grins. Winks. 

“Didn’t catch your name,” he says, returning his attention back home to what’s happening on his lap. 

She rises off of him, turns to show off her ass. “Connie.” Her hands run up her thighs and tease at the strip of cloth that’s still pretending to cover what Dean is delighted to see is a gorgeous, round ass. 

“Like ‘Sweet Connie?’”

She looks over her shoulder at him. Arches. Runs her fingers between her legs. “You like Grand Funk?”

Dean chuckles, loves the absurdity of it. “Yeah. Maybe a lot more now.” He adjusts his jeans, un-traps his increasingly evident hard-on. 

“Sexy and he’s got good taste. Aren’t I a lucky girl.” Connie lowers herself down onto his lap again, circling her hips and grinding her ass against him.

“God, I hope so,” he murmurs. Keeping his body still is a small price to pay to have Connie all over him like he’s a jungle gym. 

She turns again, straddles his hips. He can feel the heat rolling off of her, like she’s actually turned on as she rides on him, first with her arms around his shoulders, then leaning back to show off.

The song starts to change, and she licks her lips and gives him an appraising look. “Want me to keep going, sugar?”

Dean glances at the room, then back to Connie. “Yeah, but not here.”

She grins and takes him by the hand, leads him to the back of the club. She nods at the bouncer, and he pulls the cheap velvet curtain aside to admit them. Behind it is a little alcove with three doors and a second bouncer, this time seated at a little desk. Dean can make out a little monitor built into the desk surface. Cameras, he guesses.  
One of the doors is open. 

Dean hands the bouncer forty, then palms him a twenty. The guy gives Connie a look and she nods. The bouncer hits a button and the monitor goes dark for a second. He nods and points them to the empty room.

He sits down on the leather sofa in the center of the room. The lighting is dim, but not so dim he can’t enjoy the view. She closes the door behind them.

“So what comes after forty?” he asks, voice low. 

“Nothing.”

“That’s a shame,” he says, and shrugs out of his jacket and overshirt so that it’s just his t-shirt between his skin and what’s coming next. “I’d pay a hundred to touch you for two songs.”

“Just touching?”

Dean considers his options. He can go higher, but not much, even with the cash he already had in pocket before the ATM. She could throw him out if he pushes too hard. Might call the cops. “Depends on how much of you you’re okay with me touching.” He takes a condom out of his jacket pocket, holds it up for her to see it. .

She licks her lips, looks like she’s working out the math in her head. “One fifty. Two songs. Pay for the second song on the way out.”

One by one, Dean counts out the bills. This is a performance, too. He folds them in half and holds them between his fingers. He waits for her to come over and take the money from him. She waits a moment before she does, and he wonders if she hesitates a little because she didn’t expect him to say yes, or because she doesn’t usually trick.

God, for what he’s paying tonight, he’s going to be perilously close to needing to turn a trick, except he’s pretty sure he’ll be able to badger Harry out of some gas money to make up for it.

She turns on the music and joins him on the couch. 

Two songs isn’t a lot of time, he knows, so Dean doesn’t bother with a lot of foreplay. Instead, he strips off her panties and tastes her quick, half to get her into it and half to confirm what he already knows: that she’s been wet for him since she started grinding on him out in the club. 

He undoes his belt, turns her over on her hands and knees, and rolls the condom on. He puts a hand on her hip and lines himself up.

_Damn, she really is pretty._

If there were more time, he’d love to make the effort to get her off. Paying for sex is one thing, but he wants to be the guy who’s worth it. That’s probably not going to happen here; he’s paying for a quick and nasty strip club fuck.

That doesn’t mean Connie’s not putting on a good show. She’s making these soft little noises, and the way she moves her body against his is almost hypnotic. He cups her tits through the fabric of her lingerie, slides his hands down her, squeezes and kneads her ass. He traces between her cheeks with his thumb and grins when she gasps. 

It’s a good noise. He wants more of that. 

Dean sticks his thumb in his mouth to get it wet, then just teases her with it a little bit to see what she does. She makes this little breath-catchy noise and whimpers a yes at him. 

He doesn’t hesitate. He slides his thumb into her ass and she arches – definitely for real now – and he speeds up his pace as the second song starts. 

There’s no grace in the act; this is rutting. He’s desperate to finish, she’s…desperate for whatever she’s desperate for. His wallet, probably, but Dean’s happier to pay attention to the way she’s fucking herself on him while he fucks her. He slams into her when he comes, pumping his hips a couple more times for good measure. He pulls out just before the end of the second song, sweaty and shaking. 

On impulse, he puts her on her back as the third song starts. It’s dumb – like, the meter’s running here – but a good fuck is a good fuck. He works her with his hand and his tongue until he feels her shudder and squeeze down on his fingers and and okay, if he’s got to find another forty or sixty bucks somewhere for that, it’s a price he’s willing to pay. 

“How much extra?” he asks when he catches his breath.

She laughs, picks up her panties. “Two songs. Outside.”

Dean tucks his softening dick back into his pants. “Yeah, alright.” 

The bouncer doesn’t even blink when they emerge from the room. Dean hands him the extra eighty bucks, glad for the endorphins that are taking the edge off of the price gouging part of this whole experience.

Connie goes back to work without a backward glance. Dean settles his bar tab and leaves. He can still taste her, and even if he hasn’t had nearly as much to drink as he’d planned, he’s not going to wash that down with cheap whiskey right away.

He’s not ready to go back to the hotel, so he just walks. Bismarck’s not much to look at, but most places aren’t. He’s used to the night, seen more places than he can count. There’s something soothing, though, in a nighttime street. He wanders until the air turns cold enough that he can see his breath, then winds up having to use his GPS to find the hotel again. By the time he opens the door, his face is numb and Sam is dead asleep. Dean is grateful for small favors.

* * *

They pull into Harry’s driveway around dinner time. Dean suspects but does not ask whether this is really Harry’s mom’s place. There’s no way somebody working flexible hours at a Kinko’s owns a multi-level ranch in the suburbs.

He’s got a long list of reasons to be glad they’re done with the drive, ranging from the obvious (Harry Spengler or Spangler or whatver the hell his name is) to the sublimely ridiculous (Harry insists on pronouncing “D'yer Mak'er” like it rhymes with “tire breaker,” which nearly gets him left on the side of the road just outside of Eau Claire).

Dean still makes good on giving Harry the number to his other, other cell, and then shakes him down for gas money.

“Jeez, man,” Harry complains when Sam gives a quick ballpark off the top of his head of how much the gas alone set them back. “You guys need to invest in a Prius or something.” 

Sam sees Dean tense like he’s going to throw a punch and sends him back to the Impala. When Sam joins him, he’s got a little over two hundred dollars. 

“Jesus,” Dean groans, and starts the car. “I swear, we should have just put him on a bus.”

Sam pockets the cash. “Yeah, we could have. Why didn’t we?”

Dean ignores the question. “You think we can make Des Moines tonight?”

“Six more hours? You sure you’re good for that?” 

“Better on the road than here in Ghostfacer country.”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, good point. Alright. Let’s hit it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 51stCenturyFox faces the nightmares, she faces the dread, she betas like hell til' my errors are dead. Because she's awesome like that.
> 
> Very Necessary Disclaimer: While there's some overlap between women who work as dancers and women who sell sex, this scenario is not representative of reality, and assume that goes double given that this is from Dean's PoV. Not calling him psychotic or anything, but he's got a deep seated fantasy here about what it means to be a "good John" as it were. And probably a bit of an ego trip. So.
> 
> As always, similarities to the canon are intentional, because hi. Fanfiction.
> 
> Title from "White Heat, Red Hot" by Judas Priest


	9. Gimme a Bullet to Bite On, and II'll Make Believe it's You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's first contact with the blade knocks him off balance. Castiel is there to talk him down, but the call doesn't end the way Dean expects.

Hell has marked him, and now Hell has him. From the minute the blade touches Dean’s skin for the first time, every nerve of him is ablaze with high-octane fire, straight from the Pit.

Oh, he talks a good game about remembering the Pit. He’s wrong. Those memories are shadows compared to this. This is the whole thing, all at once, every drop of blood and iron hook, and it’s going to burn him clean from the inside out. 

Inside he is screaming, fighting back because he knows there’s too much to do. Abaddon is out there. Metatron is out there. Sammy, his little brother, is out there. 

The blade doesn’t care. The blade sees those reasons and Dean knows that it will salt them, reduce them to ash, and blow them away in a wind that could scour the bark from a tree. It will not make it easy on him. It will make him suffer. 

The second time is easier. He takes the blade with Intention and fulfills his Purpose, but there is not enough blood.

_—deandropthebladedeandropbladethedropthe—_

The living bodies around him sing with blood. 

_—deandropthebladedeandeandropthebladedropthedeandropthe—_

Dropping the blade is reflex, or maybe just pure muscle memory. Habit and ganglia. 

It doesn’t matter, though, because this is just postponing the inevitable.

He will be Perfected, body and soul. 

* * *

“Dean, seriously. Pull over. I’ll drive.”

“No.” He’s white-knuckling the wheel, sure. He’s twenty miles over the limit and climbing. But they _trashed his Baby_.

Sam sighs. “Okay, but could you at least not kill us?”

“I’m not going to wrap the car around a goddamn tree, Sammy.” 

“Yeah, maybe not intentionally.” 

Dean grits his teeth, takes a corner a lot too fast, and Sam lets loose with a string of profanity that would make a whole crew of sailors proud. Ten more minutes to the Bunker, tops. 

Ten more minutes. He can do that.

Sam says a lot of other stuff under his breath in those ten minutes. They are both probably happy to be home when Dean gets them into the bunker’s garage, but Dean’s less worried about Sam’s disapproval than he is about the serious-ass paint damage he’s got to figure out, and just how hard he’s going to make Abaddon pay for it.

If he thinks about this, he doesn’t have to think about the other thing. 

He crouches down beside his car, his one constant, and inspects the damage. The scratches are bad, down into the primer and down into the metal in a couple of places. He needs to repaint the panels, which means he needs to go shopping. He can’t do that until the morning, but he can make a list.

It’s not a short list. It’s a long, expensive, rage-inducing list. He’ll need to rent an air compressor. And a sander. He needs to look up the color code so he can match the paint.

“It’s okay, Baby,” he mutters as he pockets the list. “We’re gonna get you fixed up.”

The Bunker is silent – Sam’s apparently gone to bed – and that’s bad, because that means the noise inside his head is louder than the noise outside of it.

Not literal noise. He’s not crazy. It’s just that there’s nothing else to notice beyond the shaking of his hands and the nausea he’s been punching down since they got out of Magnus’ lair.

Kitchen. He should go to the kitchen. The kitchen is safe. 

The kitchen also has a trash can, which Dean grabs just in time. He sinks to the floor with it and heaves everything in his guts up.

He can’t quit shaking. He held it together in front of Sam as long as he could, and then he made the list, but apparently letting the full force of the day hit him is the next thing on his agenda. He grips the edge of the can and tries to suppress the need to vomit again. He retches instead, because his body says the solution to this is a round of painful dry heaving just in case it missed something the first time around.

It lasts however long it lasts. When it stops, he rests his head against the wall and tries to catch his breath, then ties the bin liner shut so he can toss it down the chute. 

His hands really need to quit shaking, because that is _not_ helping.

The sink is his next step. Dean turns the tap on and washes his hands under the cool, then ducks his head to get a mouthful. He swishes, spits into the sink, then washes his face with his hands. 

_I heard Sam’s blood._

He washes his hands again. Turns off the tap. Dries them.

_I heard Sam’s blood and I wanted to gut him._

His phone is in his hand almost before he can think, but he hesitates. He needs Cas, but what’s he going to say? _“Hey, so you know any good ways not to kill my brother?”_ Or maybe _“Hey, remember that time you pulled me out of Hell? Yeah, sorry, but I’m pretty sure I just booked a return trip.”_

He dials anyway.

“Dean?” Castiel sounds surprised. “What’s wrong?”

“Rough night,” he rasps. “Talk me down, man.”

“Where are you?”

Dean looks around. “Kitchen. Kansas. Safe. Heading to my room.” _I’m not the one who needs you to protect him._ “Abaddon’s mooks keyed my car.”

“You caught up with Abaddon?” Dean hears the jingle of keys, like Cas has grabbed them from whatever hotel night stand they’re on.

“No. No, we were somewhere else. She was –“ _she was sending Crowley a message_ “—she was toying with us. Psyching us out.”

Cas lets out a breath. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

Dean opens his bedroom door and steps inside. It’s barer than it used to be. He’s been packing things away, little by little. It’s better this way. He shuts the door behind him and sits on the bed.

“So. How is it out there?”

“It is…difficult.” Cas sounds tired. “The angels here on Earth are in chaos. Metatron is using that to his advantage, I think.”

“That sucks.”

“Yes, Dean, it does.”

Dean feels steadier. He’s still wound up, yeah, but he’s not hitting critical mass anymore. He shouldn’t lean on Cas this way, he knows. John didn’t raise him to be the kind of man who comes apart like this. Hell, that stunt in the kitchen might’ve earned him some stripes if he’d done that back in the day. 

_You’re the son of a goddamn U.S. Marine. Act like it._

“What are you going to do when you get your wings back?” he asks. Not out of nowhere, admittedly. They’ve had this conversation before, and Dean ended it because that was the right thing to do. Jerking off in the Impala after probably wasn’t the right thing, but it was a less bad thing. 

Maybe he’ll do the right thing again, but he’s got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach like once he’s close to the edge he might just jump. 

“Cas, you there?”

“Yes.”

Dean realizes he can feel his own pulse in his throat. His palms are sweating. “Was that a bad question?”

“No, but it wasn’t the question you wanted to ask me.”

Oh. Right. _That_ edge. 

“Ask me, Dean. I’m waiting.” 

Cas’ voice is low and serious and commanding enough that Dean’s face feels hot. No, his whole body feels hot. 

“What are you – I mean, when you – when you get your wings,” Dean stammers. “What are you going to do?”

“In general, Dean, or to you?”

“To me, Cas. What are you going to do to me when you have your wings back?”

_Goodbye, edge. Precipice. Whatever the hell you call the thing you fall off of at times like this._

Cas actually chuckles. “Hmm. I don’t know, Dean. What would you like me to do to you?”

The sound Dean makes – half whimper, half gasp, all raw wanting – is entirely beyond his control.

“Because I’d start by kissing you, Dean. Not gently, even if I want to kiss you gently too, but hard against the wall so that you have to take it or fight me. You like to choose, and I would make you choose.”

“Yes,” Dean whispers, throat dry. 

“And when you made your choice, Dean, I’d know it before you could even say. I’d know it in the taste of your saliva, and the smell of your sweat, and your heart rate. By the time you’d be able to say, I’d already be sliding my hands against your jacket, pushing it and your work shirt off your shoulders because once this starts, Dean, I am under your armor and you need to know that.”

Dean shrugs out of both and chucks them onto the floor. 

“I’d bow my head against your neck and shoulder, like a good angel should bow his head, except I’d do it to taste that tender space that almost nobody can get right, right where your neck and shoulder meet, but not so far back that your shoulder and back muscles join in. You can count on one hand how many lovers you’ve been with who find that spot, and I’m going to be one of them.”

Dean touches that place with his fingertips and his nerves light up like thermite. 

“Are you touching yourself there Dean?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because the next thing I’d do would be to undo your belt. Because we’re not going to bother with the foreplay that first time, are we? You’re going to want me to get you off fast before you lose your nerve.”

He’s having trouble making words, but getting his belt undone is cake. He can go further, but he’s waiting for Cas. 

“Say yes, for me, Dean.”

“Cas –“

“Tell me yes.”

“Yes, damn it. _Yes._ ”

He hears Castiel’s breathing change on the other end of the line. Recognizes it from that night in Nebraska. He pictures Cas flushed, sprawled on his own hotel bed, maybe stroking himself through his suit trousers. Dean wants it to be his hands there. His mouth, maybe. He wants to rumple that suit, pop Castiel’s shirt buttons, and be skin-to-skin with him.

“We’d still be pressed up against that wall, because there’s no way I’m letting go of you now. Not when I’m finally undoing the button of your jeans and undoing your fly. I’d slide my hand in, between those warm layers of cloth, and Dean, you’d be so hard. You’d grind against my hand and make little sounds you don’t realize you make because human beings can’t hear them. But I can, Dean. How do you think I know this is what you want? All that time pretending, that’s over now, isn’t it?”

“Y-yes.” He grinds against his own hand, held just where Cas’ hand should be. Is. Fuck it, he doesn’t care whose hand is where right now.

“When I see just how bad you want it, I’ll push your jeans and your underwear down your hips. Not all the way down. Just enough to free you for my hand. I’m not going to be gentle with that either, you know that, don’t you, Dean? I’ve been in your head. I know how you do it when all you want to do is come fast and hard. How you barely even give yourself a warm-up before you start fucking your fist. Except now it’s _my_ fist you’re fucking Dean, isn’t it?”

“Oh fuck, yes.”

For a moment the call is nothing but their breathing. Dean’s is more desperate than Castiel’s, but Cas isn’t the one pinned up against a wall getting jerked off, so that makes sense. 

“How long do you hold out on me Dean? Because you know I’m going to be doing everything I can to make sure you don’t last. That’s not what this first time is for. Slow and tender, that’s for later. Right now, all I want is for you to come for me. Can you do that for me Dean? Can you spend yourself like that, right now in my hand?”

Dean isn’t entirely sure that the noise he makes qualifies as a yes, but the orgasm Cas just dragged out of him isn’t the kind of orgasm that really needs to happen in English. He’s gasping, sprawled out on his bed, in complete disarray, woozy on the good kind of endorphins instead of being fucked up on the bad ones for once.

“Cas?” 

“Yes?”

“Does this, uh,” he starts, not quite sure how to frame the question. “Does this change things? Between us?” 

“Do you want it to change things?”

Dean shakes his head, “I don’t know. I’m not thinking right, what with the, uh, you know. The surprise phone sex.” He picks at his t-shirt. He hasn’t had to do laundry like this since high school.

“Of course.” Castiel’s voice is, of course, perfectly even, because Cas is an inscrutable bastard. “You should rest.”

“Yeah.” He sits up and pulls his t-shirt off and drops it on the floor, then reaches to untie his boots. “Look, just give me a couple of days. I’m not saying I’m un-choosing or anything. I just need to figure out what this whole thing looks like, okay? There aren’t a lot of ways this isn’t messed up.”

Dean rubs his arm. The Mark isn’t silent. If anything, he can feel it waiting, pent-up and eager for Castiel to turn on him. Which he will. If not now, later. This isn’t real or true. It’s a reprieve, and it’s only good for as long as Cas can’t see who he is, or the thing he’s becoming.

“Good night, Dean.”

“Yeah. Night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 51stCenturyFox betas like Dean drives: like a boss.
> 
> Title from "Gimme a Bullet" by AC/DC.
> 
> Follows 9x16 (Blade Runners).


	10. Oh Trouble, Please Be Kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After touching the blade, Dean struggles with the Mark and its implications.

Dean doesn’t sleep.

He should need to sleep, what with how long he’s been awake, and the fight with Magnus, the drive back, and the call to Castiel that’s still giving him both good and bad twinges. After an hour in the dark, though, he gives in to wakefulness and turns the light back on. 

Bare walls, bare shelves. Laundry on the floor. That needs to go. It’s a break in the order of his space. His father would call it a break in discipline. He gathers it up, puts it in the closet hamper with the rest of his dirty laundry. 

If he’s not going to sleep, he should do his laundry. 

Dean hauls the hamper out and carries it down to the laundry room, tucked down behind the bunker’s washroom. There’s no real clarity to be found here, doing chores in the middle of the night, but it’s giving his hands something to do. There’s some space left in the load, and Sam’s definitely in bed at this point, so he strips off his jeans and his underwear and drops them in, too. He can shower while he’s back here. 

Say what he might about the Men of Letters, those dudes had plumbing down to a science.

The water is hot on his skin and Dean allows himself a little groan. Muscles he didn’t realize were tight start to loosen in his back and shoulders under the spray. There’s another kind of tension in him, deeper than flesh, that doesn’t leave him. It’s been there for a while, but with everything else happening with his brother and Cas and Kevin that feeling had been lumped in with the other bullshit. 

He can’t ignore it now. The minute he touched the blade, that was it. This is the new normal. 

The weirdest part is that he doesn’t look any different. He feels like he should, like there should be a warning label saying that he’s a weapon. But hasn’t he always been? Heaven had literally bred his parents for Michael and Lucifer, and while Sam got to be Sam, Dean was only ever Michael’s sword. To the powers that be, Dean has only ever been an object, and his father did a hell of a job making sure that object was sharp.

Cain was the only one who ever really gave him a choice. 

That choice doesn’t wash away with the grime of the road and the remnants of his call with Cas, but he’s getting a little clarity here. Take away the anger and the guilt and the confusion, and there’s a path. He can go willingly or he can fight, but that’s it. If he’s going to come out the other side of this thing, the only way out is through it.

Crowley stealing the blade means nothing in the long run. That blade is his now. And he’s going to take Abaddon down with it. And Crowley. Those two are just the head of the list, too. His hands are already dirty. Might as well get his money’s worth. 

Dean turns off the shower, dries off, and ties the towel around his waist. He’s got work to do, and he needs to get started.

* * *

“You’re up early.” 

“Couldn’t sleep.” Dean looks up. Sam’s in his running gear, which tells Dean everything he needs to know about what time it is. 

Sam comes over, leafs through one of the files on the library table Dean has taken over with papers and tapes. “What’s got you so interested in research all of a sudden?”

“Abaddon. The sooner we gank that bitch, the better.”

Sam considers it, nods. “Yeah, alright. Want some help?” 

Dean shakes his head. “Go run. It’ll all still be here when you get back.”

Oh, and it’s more than still there when Sam gets back. It’s still there when Dean gives in to his stomach around noon and goes out for food and to pick up supplies for fixing his Baby. He lays out the plastic and sands the panels first thing when he gets back, which takes a few hours, but he comes back to hit the books with a vengeance after he wipes the panels down. He can’t prime until the thinners evaporate anyway. Best to leave it and go back to work. 

At some point Sam puts a plate in front of him and tells him to eat the goddamn sandwich because Dean is “acting like a hangry asshole,” whatever the hell that means. It’s not a bad sandwich, even if Sam puts a bunch of weird vegetables in it. 

The problem is manifold. One, there’s a lot of lore to dig through, and not all of it is obvious because not everybody knows a demon from a Knight of Hell, and folks who do don’t tend to get a chance to write a whole lot down. Two, the Men of Letters took a lot of notes. A lot. And man, some of them had bad handwriting. 

Then there’s the problem of the ‘58 massacre, because a bunch of records just stop, and Dean’s sure there’s got to be something in those last few notes that will tell them something. 

“Okay, man, I’m turning in,” Sam says, and Dean has to look at his watch to confirm that yeah, it is actually pushing midnight. “You should try and get some rest.”

“Yeah.” Dean rubs his eyes. “Night.” 

* * *

Sometime after two he pushes away from the table. He wants like hell to sleep, but goes out to the garage to spray a layer of primer first, because if he’s going to hunt he’s going to need his car, and she’s not going back out there until those panels are good and ready. 

Halfway through spraying the first coat, he decides to stay up and finish priming. It makes better sense than doing one coat, cleaning everything up, and then doing the rest later.

By the time he’s done cleaning the paint sprayer, Sam’s already out on his morning run. 

Dean grabs some fresh clothes and hits the showers.

The hot water takes some of the pain out of his muscles, but not all of it. His body should be nearing the wall of exhaustion. His brain feels full of too much stuff, like he needs to hit some kind of reset button. His eyes ache like they do on a long night drive when it’s time to pull into the next town and get a room before he starts seeing black dogs. 

Not _real_ black dogs. That’s a whole different protocol. 

It’s those wires of tension in him keeping him from the verge of collapse right now. It’s got him strung together like an articulated skeleton. Strung out, too, like too many trucker pills and too much coffee. It hurts, sort of, if he focuses on it too long. It aches like empty bellies and lust. 

He looks down, realizes he’s flexing his forearm. The Mark stands out lurid on his wet skin. It’s the beating heart of this operation, and Dean can’t decide if he wants to crush it or fill it with his own blood until there’s nothing left to give.

It occurs to him that Cain is family. He’s not sure how that works, because that far back pretty much everybody is family. Dean doesn’t understand why it is that he has to be special, that Sam has to be special. The planet ought to be lousy with brothers like them. 

It isn’t. 

So maybe there was never any way out of this. Maybe he was always going to end up in some cabin in Missouri staring down his greatest of grandfathers and taking on the real family business. Because everything John Winchester taught him pales in comparison to this thing. 

He doesn’t want it. He never wanted this. He just wanted to be a kid, and when he couldn’t have that he worked like hell so that Sammy could have a chance to be free. And hey, didn’t that work out a treat? Ain’t destiny a bitch? 

“Suck it up, soldier,” he hisses to himself. If he hears his father’s voice in there, well, it is what it is.

* * *

About halfway through the morning, Sam goes down into the archives. He comes back up with a file box and a brad-bound manuscript. 

“So get this: the Men of Letters were studying pre-Enochian.”

“Pre- _Enochian_?” Dean makes a face. “Dude, Enochian is angel-speak. How is that even a thing?”

“Beats me,” Sam says, then holds out the manuscript. “But guess who turned out to be pretty good at it.”

Dean takes the papers, reads the author’s name. “Josie Sands?” 

“Might explain why Abaddon liked her. She was kind of an up-and-comer.”

“Maybe,” Dean says, hands it back. “It’s not like demons have to be choosy about their meatsuits, though. Could have just been wrong place, wrong time.”

“Yeah, true. Still, if we’re going to cast a wide net --”

Dean nods. “Add it to the stack.”

* * * 

After lunch, Dean goes back to the garage. He plans to sand the primer coat and start on the paint, but he ends up getting into the Impala instead and laying down in the back seat, and hiding in the comfort of his wounded car.

For the first time in days, he sleeps.

He dreams about Purgatory. He is fast there, and deadly, and every kill feeds the fire in his sinew until all of the gaps in him are filled and blazing and all he can hear is his own heartbeat in this half-dead place. 

_Perfected. Complete. Yes._

There’s a sound behind him, and he spins, too fast, blade already lined up for the killing blow before he realizes who it is. He can’t stop in time. 

His brother’s body crumples, the name “Dean” half-said on its lips.

_“Dean!”_

Dean’s eyes snap open. He’s breathing too hard, like he’s about to hyperventilate. It takes him a moment to realize he’s in his car, and the voice is his brother’s. “Sammy? What’s wrong?”

Sam scoffs from his spot in the front seat. “You tell me. I just came out here to see how things were going. Looks like you were having a hell of a nightmare. You alright?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. He sits up and drags his fingers through his hair. “Peachy.”

“Okay.” The worry in Sam’s expression is obvious, but he doesn’t push. “You need any help out here?” 

“Sure. Why not?”

He doesn’t, really, but sanding the primer down is faster with two pairs of hands, and Sam brings them beer so they can sit around while the first coat of paint cures. For a little while they’re brothers again, giving each other shit about how they are literally watching paint dry. 

Every time he closes his eyes, Dean sees the blade cleave into Sam’s chest and stop his heart. 

Sam goes back to work on research when Dean goes back to working on the paint. His Baby’s looking a hundred times better already. She ought to. He’s cared for her, rebuilt her, and kept the secret things. If a grown man shoving old-ass, dirty Legos into salvaged vents isn’t love, he doesn’t know what is. 

Sam won’t care about that. Not the way Dean does. There’s nobody after him that’s going to love his Baby like he does, or who knows every inch of her. 

He doesn’t want to let her go.

* * *

Dean’s back in the library when Sam comes back in from his morning run. He hasn’t bothered to change or shower, and he knows that won’t escape notice, but he’s got to do something with his time if he’s not sleeping, and this is something.

He presses the Mark with his thumb under the table and wills it to stop digging into him. It digs harder, pulsing along the lines of tension that are keeping him whole. 

_I don’t want to win this fight. I made a mistake._

The pulse becomes a burn. 

_This isn’t me. I can’t do this. Sammy got to quit the trials. Why can’t I quit this?_

And like that, he’s that little boy with his daddy’s silver knife in his hand again, and it doesn’t matter what he wants now. 

* * *

He lets the last of the paint cure overnight before he takes his Baby outside to wash and wax her. She’s perfect again, and he’s proud of that. No matter what happens, she’s always going to be the one thing he did right. 

* * *

He sends Sam to Illinois alone and works his way through a fifth of scotch. When he fugues out, he panics, starts to call Cas, but thinks better of it. He’s not in any condition to talk to Cas right now. There’s too much unanswered between them, and he still hasn’t told Cas about the Mark. 

Dean grabs his jacket. He’s gonna get out and keep this drunk on for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Trouble" by Cat Stevens. 
> 
> Learning how to repair extensive scratches in car finishes may be one of the most difficult things I've had to dig up online. It's an intensive process, and most of the time one is encouraged to rely on a body shop to do the work. Dean's not that guy, though. I'm sorely tempted to add Dean/Impala to the tags simply on the basis of his relationship with his Baby, but that might sound like the wrong kind of auto-erotic experience. Er. 
> 
> Many thanks as always to 51stCenturyFox, who trusted in my automotive prowess.


	11. And There's Nothing Much Left of Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The burden of the Mark continues to weigh on Dean, the search for clues continues, and a call is made.

Dean knows a thing or two about demons. He knows more than that about Crowley.

Unfortunately, that knowledge is mutual.

He remembers a thing Bobby told him one winter when his father had dumped him and Sam in Sioux Falls during a school break. “The devil don’t get you by lying, Dean. He gets you by telling you the truth.”

So it burns him that Crowley is right about the fear, and how maybe he’s more like Cain than he likes to admit, and how he’s been raised a killer. It burns him enough that by the time he realizes what Crowley’s doing -- which is maybe a lot longer than it should be, thanks to the alcohol -- he starts plowing through research notes with an extra edge of spite.

Crowley is pushing him toward this fight, but unless Crowley’s picked up some new tricks, there’s no way he’ll be able to stand up to the onslaught when Dean’s powered up on the blade. Abaddon’s still priority one, but she’s the boss fight. Crowley? 

Dean licks his lips. He can’t wait to gut that son of a bitch like a rabbit. 

He doesn’t realize how much he loses track of time until Sam comes in, back from Illinois. Maybe it’s the Mark talking, but Dean’s pretty sure he can almost smell the fear on his brother when Sam picks up a handful of files and joins in.

Sam _should_ be scared. Abaddon starting up a demon factory? On a scale of one to ten, that’s pretty much a fifty. 

“Hey, I should call Cas,” Dean says, letting his papers drop to the table. “He’s going to want to know about this.” 

Sam nods. “Good idea. I’ll go see what I can find in the archives about turning souls into demons.” 

“Yeah.” Dean pushes his chair back and stands. He doesn’t point out to Sam that one of them knows way more about that than he’d like. 

Dean waits until he’s in the dormitory hall before he calls Cas. 

“Dean.” 

“Hey, Cas.” The corner of his mouth ticks up as he says it. Even with everything going on between them, and how he’s still seriously got no idea what the hell he’s doing, talking to Cas centers him. “Got some news on Team Abaddon. Apparently she’s building an army.”

“She’s vying for the crown of Hell. Of course she’s amassing forces.”

“No, I mean she’s building an army. She’s got flunkies ripping souls out of living people and flipping them over to the dark side.”

Dean takes the silence on Cas’ end of the line as acknowledgement of the seriousness of the situation. 

“Any ideas, man? Clock’s ticking here.”

“I if I can stop Metatron, perhaps some of the angels would be willing --” 

“To what, settle a bitchfight in Hell? Cas, that’s like asking whether you’d like to have a slumber party with Patrick Bateman or Hannibal Lecter.”

“I have no idea who those people are.”

Dean sighs and rests his head against his bedroom door. “Nevermind. Do you really think that’s an option? I mean, my experience with angels is mostly that they’re dicks when they bother to show up at all. No offense.”

“None taken.” Cas sighs. “It troubles me that we’re forced to fight on multiple fronts like this. This is chaos in every possible way.”

“Yeah. Like we’ve got to fight the hammer and the anvil, but somebody gave the hammer to a crazy person, and the anvil’s...well, it’s an anvil.” He remembers Oklahoma City, and shakes his head. “Anyway. It’s messed up.”

He should end the call. They’ve covered the basics. He can go back to looking for Abaddon. He opens his door instead and steps inside. The door closes behind him. 

“How are you, Cas?”

“I am…” Castiel pauses, like he’s not sure how to answer. “Hopeful. Against all evidence.” 

Dean smiles. “Too much time down here on Earth, man. Human beings are a bad influence.”

“Yes.”

Dean can hear the smile in Castiel’s tone. 

“I’m guessing it’s too much to ask for you to be anywhere close to Kansas right now.”

“Texas.”

“Damn.” He sits down on the bed. “Hey, about the other day. Was that, uh... Cas, were you serious? About the wings? What you wanted to do?” He isn’t quite ready to acknowledge the part where what Cas wants to do is pin him to the wall and get him off, but the message should be clear enough.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” 

Dean swallows. His heart hurts. He wants, absurdly, to ask why on earth Cas would want him. He won’t, because that’s stupid. Cas isn’t the first, and unless Dean gets unlucky in the field or this war Cas won’t be the last. And yeah, it’s weird because Cas is an angel, and because he’s a dude, but this ache isn’t about that.

It’s about Lisa Braeden. Because there has literally, in his entire life, been one person who wanted him and knew him at the same time, and that turned to shit the minute he stopped being able to hide from his life. 

And honest to god, he wishes he didn’t miss her and Ben. He’s glad he can’t go back. It’s better that Cas made it so that Dean’s just some stranger who hit them with his car, because that’s pretty much all he did to them in the end. He came in and he wrecked the place. Hell, they moved to _Michigan_. 

“Dean?” 

“Yeah.” He inhales sharp through his nose, swallows, blinks away the moisture gathering in his eyes. “Sorry. I must have spaced out there. Must be all the research.” 

And thank fuck Cas doesn’t call him on it and just lets the roughness of his voice go with an “Okay,” because as much as he thought he was going to talk to Cas about where he is with this thing they’re apparently doing now, that’s officially a no-go.

“I gotta go, Cas. Keep me in the loop, okay? Be safe.”

“I will.”

Dean lets the phone fall onto the bed and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

* * *

Two days after Sam comes back, Dean hits the end of his patience.

He hasn’t slept more than a couple of hours in the better part of a week, and he’s done nothing but dig and read and reference and for basically nothing. They have gotten one hundred goddamn percent _nowhere_.

“Fuck this,” he snaps, and pushes away from his table with enough force that his chair teeters and almost falls when he stands. “Fuck this. Fuck _all_ of this.” 

Sam finds him in the kitchen, almost a third of the way into a fifth of Beam. 

For once, Sam sits down across from him with a glass, pours himself about a shot’s worth, and joins in. 

“This is hopeless,” he says, cutting Sam off before he can even start to speak. “Seriously. We’ve been over everything. More than everything. Monographs, letters, journals. She’s like a damn ghost.”

Sam shakes his head, takes a sip. “No, ghosts are easy. She’s like a…” Sam makes a hopeless gesture. 

“A knight of hell?” Dean ventures. 

“Yeah.”

“So what are you thinking? Call Crowley, maybe? See if he’s heard anything?”

Sam frowns. “I don’t know. Maybe back to Illinois? She had an operation going in Milton. Maybe there’s something I missed.” 

“Yeah, maybe.” 

“I put out a call to some other hunters. Nothing specific, except for the whole soul-mining thing. More eyes on this and we might find a pattern.” 

“Or we might be spinning our wheels.” Dean downs the remainder of his bourbon. He glares at the bottle. He hates how much he’s relying on it these days, but with the Mark, the insomnia, and the rest of his damn life, maybe he’s earned a little bit of anaesthesia. 

“Got any better ideas?”

“Short of trying to summon her? Which, as far as I can tell, is either impossible or monumentally stupid? No.“ Dean stands. “I’m going to bed.”

* * *

His dream is cold because there is nothing left to kill. The blade is the only thing keeping him warm, and he grips it tight as he trudges through what’s left of a burned stand of trees. It stinks of ash and blackens his boots and jeans up to the knees. His hands and arms are filthy, flecked with dried blood. His shirt is stiff with it.

The landscape is familiar, but he can’t place it until he comes out into what used to be a clearing to see, bizarrely, a row of beehives, a falling-down shed, and a white farmhouse, untouched by the destruction around it.

He walks up the steps onto the porch. The door is locked. He breaks the window and reaches in to undo the deadbolt and unlock the knob. The door opens easily, and he walks in. There is a sound in the kitchen, like a glass on a counter.

Hm. Maybe there’s something left to kill, after all.

When that something turns out to be himself, sitting at the kitchen table with two glasses of whiskey waiting, Dean pauses. His mirror self -- clean, inasmuch as he has has ever been clean -- slides one of the glasses across to him. His arm is unmarked. 

Yeah, okay. He’ll defer pleasure and blood in the name of novelty.

He sits and puts the blade on the table between them, not as gesture of goodwill, but a threat. This unmarked version of himself can’t access the power of the blade. 

“So,” his mirror self says, and swirls the liquor in his glass. “Just us now, huh?”

“Looks like.”

“Huh.” His mirror takes a sip. “Never thought I’d say this, but as 2014 goes, I think I liked the one with Croatoan better.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“You, dude. You’re a one-man apocalypse. Michael would have been proud.” 

Dean scowls. 

“What’s wrong? The walking, talking avatar of murder doesn’t like it when somebody points out that he’s outdoing the second biggest dick in Heaven? Lucifer at least wanted to keep the planet. You? You’re more straight-up salt and burn.”

Dean’s eyes flick to the window and the scorched landscape outside, then back down at his filthy hands. “Where’s Sammy?” 

“God, you don’t even remember, do you? How far gone are, you, man?” His mirror self gives him a look that would be pity if it could get through the anger. “Look at yourself and you tell me where you think Sammy is.”

His fingers trace over the Mark. It doesn’t even hurt anymore. It just is.

“Cas, too. And Jody. Garth and his pack put up a pretty good fight, but --”

“Shut up.”

“Or what, you’ll kill me?” 

Dean grabs the blade and lunges across the table, but his mirror self vanishes and reappears by the sink.

“Why do you think Cain made you agree to come kill him? Shits and giggles?”

Dean shoves the table over.

“I haven’t even told you about Michigan yet.”

He lets the blade clatter to the ground and sinks to his knees, ignoring the broken glass on the floor. “It was just supposed to be Abaddon. Crowley.”

“Yeah, well, for once in your life you get to be an overachiever. Congratu-fucking-lations.”

Dean buries his face in his hands and rests his elbows on his thighs. The sound that escapes him is less human than animal. 

* * *

He is trying to get clean. He can still feel the blood and ash from his dream, even if he can’t see it. 

So he’s just a little freaked out right now. It’ll pass, Dean knows. Nightmares are nothing new, and it’s not like they tend to come true. They’re just a thing his brain does to process out all the fucked-up shit he deals with on the daily. There is no Ghost of Christmas Future. There is only here, and now, and dealing with it.

Here and now, he’s got to deal with Abaddon. 

And yeah, he can see what it’s costing him in the mirror. He’s losing himself, little by little, but somebody had to take up the fight, and he’s the one who can. He just hopes he can keep it going long enough to win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really didn't anticipate spending so much time on the 9x17 (Mother's Little Helper) material, but the more I looked at it, the more I wanted to really dig into the problem of the Mark and Dean's degeneration. Don't worry. 9x18 stuff is coming up in the next chapter.
> 
> Like the previous chapter, the title is from "Trouble" by Cat Stevens.
> 
> As always, thanks to 51stCenturyFox for not only aiding me with her firm beta hand, but listening to me yammer about how what I really want to happen is for Dean and Cas to be in a large, soft bed, making out to "Tuesday's Gone" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.


	12. Roll With The Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Castiel calls about the angel beacon, Sam and Dean make the trip to Utah. Confrontations ensue, and the Mark of Cain is revealed. One thing's for certain, though: Cas isn't going to let go.

When Cas mentions his wings, Dean can’t suppress his smile. Still, It’s probably for the best that Sam comes back into the conversation with the business at hand. Cas is hit-and-miss with subtlety, and Dean’s pretty sure he’s not up for his brother finding out about what may or may not going on between them before he’s good and ready to explain it.

Which, given that he’s still not sure how to explain it to himself, is going to be a while.

The quickest route to Ogden is through Nebraska and Wyoming. He lets Sam take the first leg of the drive, Lebanon to Laramie. Dean doesn’t tell Sam it’s because he knows he can take the strain of six hours on the road and hit the ground running thanks to the Mark. He even pretends to sleep for part of Nebraska, partly for Sam’s benefit but mostly just to keep the peace. Listening his Baby purr and the hum of wheels on blacktop is as close to meditation as Dean ever gets, and he savors it. 

Maybe it’s the prospect of actually getting something done, or the possibility that they’re going to get to kick Gadreel’s ass, but they’re actually both in pretty good spirits when they hit Ogden’s city limits. 

Ian’s shop changes that. Sam’s the one who finds the body, but Dean’s gut twists with pain and rage at the sight of it. It’s not like Gadreel wasn’t already on his list, but this might bump him up a couple of spots. Fortunately, they’ve got some holy oil in the trunk for the occasion. 

And god _damn_ , does Dean make an occasion of it. 

It doesn’t escape him that he’s holding Sam back from avenging Kevin. Or, honestly, that he talks Sam into going to find Cas so that he can get his hands on this son of a bitch and show him what a big brother who’s literally been to Hell and back is capable of. There’s a killing rage in him so full that when he slams into the wall of realization that it’s what Gadreel _wants_ , Dean has to stop and regroup. 

He’s welcoming the feelings, like Magnus said. There’s a blade-shaped hole in him. There are whole layers of him starting to peel away from the weapon he has always been. 

Dean doesn’t like who he sees in the mirror, but them’s the breaks. 

He doesn’t give Gadreel death. He showers him with pain. First with the angel blade until Dean can feel the bloodlust screaming in his ears, then with his fists when he can’t trust himself to hold back any longer. 

_You hurt my brother._   
_You killed Kevin._   
_You son of a bitch._   
_I’m going to make you suffer._

By the time Sam finds them, Gadreel is as close to dead as any angel can be without getting run through with a chrome toothpick, and Dean...well, he’s spent and everything hurts and he’s lucky he’s not going to the hospital with half a dozen boxer’s fractures. 

Sam cleans him up, pushes some painkillers down his gullet, and gets him back on his feet again so they can put Gadreel in the trunk.

* * *

The meet up with Metatron is a shit show. The only reason they walk away at all is because Metatron finds them entertaining. 

Dean has never wanted to kill God so badly in his life.

* * *

As grateful as he is to see Cas -- and hell if there isn’t a part of him that wants to say fuck it and kiss the bastard -- he’s still riding the anger and the Mark and there’s still so much undecided between them that the best he can do is reach across to pat Cas on the shoulder in what has got to be the most standoffish way possible. 

He doesn’t know why he thought a couple of layers of clothing could hide the Mark, but he’s still taken by surprise when Cas grabs him and yanks away the sleeve of his jacket to reveal it. Dean tries to pull away -- he’s ashamed, and the hurt and anger in Cas’ eyes stings -- but Castiel’s fingers are like granite and tight enough to bruise. 

“I need to talk to your brother, Sam.” Castiel says, eyes not leaving Dean’s for an instant. He pulls Dean forward, only releasing his arm when he can get a hold of his shoulder, like he’s going to drag him to the principal’s office.

Dean throws Sam the keys to the Impala. “Go fill her up.”

Castiel’s hotel room isn’t what Dean was expecting. For one, Cas has clearly gone full-bore hunter, judging by the stuff on the walls. For another, it’s weird imagining Cas staying anywhere. He wonders if this is a learned behavior from his time as a human being. 

There’s a moment of silence when Cas locks the door behind them. Dean sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs his bruised hands. 

“You should have told me about the Mark of Cain.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Dean scoffs. “Kevin was dead, Sam was shutting me out. You were all I had left, Cas. How exactly would pissing you off have been a good idea?”

Castiel’s eyes are practically ablaze. “You thought I’d be angry?” 

“You look pretty damn angry to me right now.”

“Do I, Dean? I wonder why.”

Dean blinks, looks away. _Secrets._ Right.

“You’re injured,” Cas says, eyes flicking down to Dean’s knuckles. “Gadreel?”

“Yeah.” 

“Let me see.”

Dean lets Castiel examine his knuckles, fingers tracing over the swelling and abrasions before he touches Dean on the forehead to heal him. He doesn’t move his hand away. Instead, he lets his fingers travel down to the side of Dean’s face. 

“Dean, you are not the only one who has had to make unfortunate choices in a time of war. I hurt for you. I’m afraid for you. I don’t like that you hid this from me. But I’m not rejecting you.”

Cas leans down, then, and presses his lips to Dean’s. 

Part of him wants to push Cas away, to go back to telling him this gay shit isn’t him, and what the hell, man? Part of him wants to pull Cas closer, to dig his hands in the lapels of his brown overcoat and kiss him hard and crazy because he’s figured out he wants Cas like he wants oxygen. The rest of him wants to pull back and scream because he’s not who Cas wants him to be. He will never be that Righteous Man. He’s poison and broken glass and _he will let Castiel down_. 

But Cas is warm, and he’s there. His kiss is gentle in ways that break Dean open. He shudders and reaches up to lace his fingers in with Castiel’s, to hold that hand against his cheek as he meets Cas’ kiss, parting his lips a little to admit the tip of Castiel’s tongue. 

Cas pulls back and just looks at him for a second, like Dean is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and then those lips are back on his and they’re kissing again, deep and slow. Dean doesn’t let go of Cas’ hand, holds it there, pressed against his jaw. He slides his other hand under Cas’ coat and grabs onto his belt. He tugs down and Cas sinks down to his knees beside the bed. Dean slides down with him so that Cas is kneeling on the floor, and Dean is sort of straddling his knees with his back pressed up against the hotel bed. It’s like being pinned and being on top all at once, and he lets go of Cas’ belt and his hand and cups Castiel’s face. 

This should be good. It should be _amazing_. But as much as he’s used to being able to go out and find somebody to fuck, Dean is having trouble processing the way Castiel is touching him all over, palms flat, fingers splayed, pushing back his layers until there’s nothing between those hands and his skin but Dean’s soft t-shirt. 

He needs this too much, every single touch, being wanted, and everything is wrong about that. He can’t have this. Everything that touches him this way breaks.

“Shit,” he whispers, pulling back from Cas’ mouth and pushing Cas away so that he has to lean back on his hands. Dean rubs his face with his hands, hiding the the unwelcome moisture in his eyes. He can’t figure out how to get out of this position gracefully. “ _Shit._ ”

And of course Cas is fucking staring at him, all bewildered angel, because he doesn’t know well enough to look the fuck away. 

“Dean --” Cas reaches out a hand. Dean bats it away, far harder than he needs to.

“No.”

Cas tilts his head to the side. The rejection looks like it stings, and that just makes the hollow in Dean’s guts ache even worse. He can’t take this. The fucking _kindness_ , being wanted for real. He slides off of Castiel’s lap, fuck gracefulness, and trips trying to stagger to his feet. 

_“Dean.”_

Cas grabs his wrist, hard like in the parking lot. Dean’s jaw tightens as he tries to pull away. No dice. 

Dean’s fist flies before he can stop it, fresh-healed knuckles connecting with Cas’ cheekbone like a car crash. Cas’ head snaps back, but he doesn’t let go. Instead, he pulls Dean in and pins him to the carpet, one arm twisted behind his back. 

Dean laughs, angry. “What are you going to do, Cas. Take me by force? Like you pretended to over the phone?” He turns his head as far as he can, looks Cas in the eyes. “Fucking angels. At least demons are honest about this shit.” 

Cas recoils, lets go of Dean like he’s a piece of hot steel. He stares, as stunned as if Dean had slapped him in the face.

“Hit a nerve, huh?” Dean spits out a stray bit of carpet fiber, then wipes his mouth on the his wrist. 

Cas lowers his eyes. Says nothing. 

“So what, you’re not even going to argue?” Dean sits up, wipes at his eyes with the back of his clenched fist. “You fucking coward.” 

The Mark sings in his blood, urging him to tear this down before it can start. Dean is on his feet and in motion, fists ready. He can break Cas like he broke Gadreel. 

Cas meets his eyes before he throws the punch. “I would never hurt you.” The words are a whisper, barely audible. A prayer.

Dean flinches.

“Shut up.” His voice breaks as he says it. “Just shut the fuck up.”

He should storm out and wait for Sam to get back with the car. Instead, he sits down on the carpet, back to the mattress again and knees to his chest. He buries his face in the crook of his elbow.

He’s dimly aware of Castiel getting up and walking to the bathroom. He hears the tap turn on, then off. When Dean looks up, Cas is standing there, holding out a glass of water for him. 

Dean hesitates, then takes the water, sips it. When his phone rings, Cas bends down, takes it from Dean’s jacket pocket, and hands it to him. 

“Hey, which room are you guys in?”

Dean looks up at Cas. “Honestly, I have no idea. You should get us one, though. I think we’re here for the night.”

“Huh. Okay.”

“And order some food.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Dean hangs up. He looks at the glass of water. He wants to throw it against a wall. He never wants to let it go.

“Why are you doing this, Cas?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“This,” Dean says, and gestures with his water. “Why are you taking care of me?”

Cas sighs and sits down beside him, shoulder to shoulder. “Perhaps I’m hoping some day you’ll believe you deserve it.”

Dean makes a face, but drinks his water anyway. Cas is warm along his side, and Dean scoots into it. He should hate himself for it. Does, a little, honestly, because maybe he’s just doing this because he’s a touch-starved freak, and can’t tell the difference between love and someone being kind. 

Cas slides his arm out from between them and puts it around Dean’s shoulders and lets Dean curl against him.

It’s hard, letting himself be held like this, warm and safe on a cheap hotel floor with an empty glass in his hand, Castiel’s steady breaths are warm against his scalp. 

“I don’t deserve it, Cas,” he murmurs into Castiel’s clothes. Aches when Cas answers him with a gentle kiss to the top of his head. 

Dean raises his head, searches Cas’ face before kissing him lightly on the mouth. 

Cas doesn’t return it at first, but Dean shifts onto his lap, straddling him again. He cups Cas’ face, strokes his thumb over unmarked place where his punch connected. He kisses at Castiel’s mouth, gentle but hungry, until Cas reciprocates. 

“Are you going to punch me again?” Cas asks when he pulls away to catch his breath.

“No.” 

Dean nibbles Castiel’s jaw, stubble rough under his lips. He feels Cas inhale beneath him. He tugs at Castiel’s coat and his suit jacket until Cas leans forward and wriggles out of them. Cas’ hands move up under the back of Dean’s shirt, and he sighs against Cas’ lips at the feel of hands on skin. Dean grabs the back of his own collar and pulls his t-shirt off and lets it fall to the floor. 

“We gonna do this down here, or up on the bed?”

“Bed,” Cas says. His voice is rougher and deeper, if that’s even possible. Dean climbs off of his lap and pulls Cas up onto the bed beside him. 

If this were a pick-up, Dean would push straight into the foreplay. Instead, he tangles his body up in Castiel’s, kisses him over and over, and luxuriates in the way Cas’ hands don’t seem to know how to stop running through Dean’s hair, down his back, over his chest, across his hips, and squeezing his ass. 

Dean can’t remember ever being touched like this. He’s like one of those islands people fly over, but nobody’s explored in any depth.

Castiel’s mouth moves away from Dean’s, travels down his jaw to his throat, then lower, across his collarbone. Dean watches through his lashes as Cas moves lower down, kissing his chest and belly, until he’s nuzzling at where Dean’s hip peeks out over his jeans. 

Dean sits up, at least as nervous as he is turned on. “Boots,” he says, and reaches down to untie the laces on his left boot. Cas unties his right and pulls them both off for him. Dean helps Cas with his shirt buttons while Cas kicks off his shoes. They lay back down, face to face, and Cas pulls Dean close again. His hands are hot against Dean’s back, and Dean can feel the hardness of Castiel’s cock up against his hip. 

Dean grinds against Cas. He wants to make sure it’s clear the feeling is mutual, even it he still doesn’t know what that looks like or means. Right now he mostly just doesn’t want Cas to stop touching him. 

Dean runs his fingers through Cas’ hair and nips at his bottom lip. “I could do this for a week,” he murmurs against skin. 

“No, you’d have to stop to eat and sleep.”

“You know what I meant.”

Cas smiles, tugs at Dean’s belt. “Is it okay if I take these off?”

He feels his skin flush, embarrassment and arousal both. “Not yet.” He’s not scared. Is he scared? He’s not sure all of a sudden. He’s just not sure he’s _ready_ exactly. He buries his face in the crook of Castiel’s neck. “Jesus. I’m like teenage girl.”

Cas nips at the tender spot where Dean’s shoulder meets his neck, then licks the bite mark. He slides his knee between Dean’s legs and rocks up against him. “I don’t think I would find that as arousing.”

“Lucky me.”

Cas’ thumb brushes over Dean’s nipple and Dean sucks a breath in through his teeth. Cas grins and rolls him onto his back, then lowers his head to Dean’s chest to taste it, first with the tip of his tongue and then with his lips. As he does, Cas runs a hand up Dean’s inner thigh. It comes to rest on Dean’s hard-on.

_That sly, teasing fuck._

Dean rubs up against it and Cas chuckles low in his throat and begins to stroke Dean through his jeans. He looks entirely too gratified by the way Dean moves under his hand, grinding into it until finally Dean’s hands go to his own belt buckle. 

“Okay, fine. Fuck. Seriously. I can’t wear these right now.”

Cas grins wide and sits back on his heels as he watches Dean kick his way out of the last of his clothes before he turns his attention to Castiel’s belt. 

“If I’m not wearing them, neither are you,” Dean says, like there’s some kind of garment equity situation that needs resolution. Cas doesn’t fight it; he helps Dean strip him until they’re both kneeling on the bed, naked, lips locked, bodies pressed close. 

He’s been pretty passive other than the kissing, but being skin-to-skin like this kicks Dean into high gear. He wants, suddenly, to explore Cas with his hands and his lips the way Cas has been exploring him. 

He cups Castiel’s ass with one hand, traces up his side and chest with the other, following the lines of collar bone, shoulder, bicep. Cas sighs, blissed out and flushed as Dean slips his hand between them and grips both of their cocks together and gives an experimental stroke. 

“Is that good?”

Cas nods, eyelids fluttering. 

“Okay, how about this?” Dean asks, and lets his hips roll a little because if he doesn’t he might explode. 

Cas makes a little noise in his throat and puts his hand on Dean’s, urging him on. “Wanna get off like this,” he gasps against Dean’s shoulder. 

“Yeah,” Dean murmurs, then nips at the skin behind Castiel’s ear. “Definitely, yeah.” 

It takes them a minute to figure out a rhythm, what with hands and hips and bedsprings and everything, but when they do, Dean is surprised by how intense it is. It’s not like fucking women, where he can be the one who does all the work. Here, like this, they’re just so fucking _focused_ on each other, and how this feels, and how to keep it going. 

He doesn’t dare take his hand off of Cas’ hip for fear that they’ll slip apart, but Cas’ lets his free hand keep wandering. He grips Dean’s hair and pulls lightly and, _hello_ , Dean thinks, _new favorite thing_.

He tilts his head back to give Cas better access to his throat. “It’s okay,” he gasps. “Leave a mark, Cas. I want you on my skin again.”

Cas moves his mouth to Dean’s right collarbone. He nips and sucks, raising a perfect red mark while Dean moans and mouths fucked-out nonsense. 

“Again,” Dean pleads, and he can feel Cas smile before he lays a line of kisses from one collarbone to the other, where he makes a new mark, a near-perfect mirror of the first.

When Cas moves his mouth up higher to graze Dean’s neck with his teeth, he feels himself begin to pass the point of no return. He’s going to come, all over Cas’ dick, and both of their hands, and when Cas bites down and marks him a third time he starts to tremble because this is a visible mark that proves he belongs to Cas.

It’s the final mark, a right-hand mirror to the hickey on his neck, that does Dean in. 

Cas lets go of his hair and kisses Dean hard on the mouth, like he’s going to swallow Dean’s orgasm. They’ve been building up slow, but he can’t help it any longer. He grinds hard in their shared hands and against Cas’ dick. The friction is only sort of mitigated by the slickness they’ve both been leaking, but Dean’s nerves aren’t parsing pleasure and pain anymore, really, and once he starts to come, everything gets slick real fast. 

It coats their fists and both of their cocks, and he feels Cas’ hips stutter and speed up. 

It’s almost too much stimulation. Dean makes a noise, almost like keening, and then Cas comes against his aching dick in their shared fist, clutching at him like he’s the last lifeboat on the goddamn Titanic.

They slump down together on the mattress, panting. Their limbs and fingers are still a jumble, and Cas won’t quit kissing him all over, and Dean doesn’t want him to stop, especially when those lips travel down his body and Cas cleans him up with his tongue.

Dean sits up and pulls Castiel’s face to his so he can kiss him on the mouth. He’s decided he likes the taste of them together on Cas’ tongue. Cas follows him up the bed and they lay there together, spent and soft, lips and fingers still gently exploring when Dean’s phone rings again. 

“I have to answer that,” he murmurs against Cas’ mouth, then turns over so he can reach over the edge of his bed for the phone.

“Hey, Sammy. What’s the good word?”

“Well, we’re in room 22. Food’s here, too, whenever you’re hungry.”

Dean bites back a smile, because man, Sam has _no idea_. “Okay. Yeah. Thanks.”

He hangs up, drops the phone, and then goes back to his place in Cas’ arms. He may not trust himself, or where this is going, but right now he just wants to breathe the smell of sex and let Cas hold him some more. 

“I’m choosing you over food right now. Feel special.”

“Should you go?”

“Only if it’s burgers. Cold fries suck.”

Cas strokes the back of Dean’s neck just below the hairline.

“Pizza’s okay cold, though. And Chinese. I kind of like cold Chinese.”

Okay, so maybe he’s hungry. Whatever. 

“Dean. Look at me.”

He tilts his head back so that he can see Castiel’s face. He looks relaxed -- beatific, almost, which Dean guesses makes sense with the angel thing and all -- and Cas presses his fingers to the marks on his throat. His skin tingles for a second, like static electricity. Dean looks down when he realizes Cas is healing him, then sighs relief that the marks on his collarbones are still there. 

“I know you wanted them, but I didn’t think you wanted Sam to see.”

Dean feels his face flush. “No. Uh. Thanks.” It’s weird, being taken care of, and he feels sort of exposed now, both in terms of Cas marking him and then giving him an out. Maybe he should feel bad about this, like it’s another secret for Sam to be pissed off about, and he’s making Cas complicit in it.

His stomach growls.

“You should go eat.” Cas kisses Dean’s forehead, then sits up. “Do you want a shower?”

“Nah, just a wet washcloth.” 

Dean gathers up his clothes and checks that everything that’s supposed to be in his pockets still is. Cas brings him a damp cloth and a dry towel. 

“I’m taking a shower. You and Sam are in Room 22?” 

“Eavesdrop much?” 

Cas gives him a mildly exasperated look. Dean winks. 

* * *

Dinner turns out to be Chinese. The sweet and sour sauce is a little funky, but that’s one of the things Dean actually kind of likes about cheap food. You never know what to expect, because even the really obvious stuff tastes different sometimes. 

Dean eats all of the General Tso’s, and most of the crab rangoons. Sam gives him the extra egg roll, and Dean bites into it with relish. 

“So what’s up with Cas? You were over there for a while.”

“Nothing,” Dean says through the egg roll. He concentrates really hard on poking the last of his rice with his chopsticks. “He just wanted to check me out, make sure I was okay.”

“And are you?”

Dean swallows. “Well, I’m walking around with the Mark of Cain, so that’s a little negative.” 

Sam looks concerned, but Sam pretty much always looks concerned. Dean knows what he’s not asking. He wants to know about a cure. Instead, Sam nods. “He fixed your hands.” 

“Yeah.” 

There’s a knock on the door, and it’s Cas, looking mildly rumpled but more or less tidy. His eyes meet Dean’s briefly, acknowledging him before he turns to Sam. 

“We need to talk about Metatron.”

* * * 

They plan late into the night, Dean working his way through most of a six-pack while they try and game out Metatron’s angle. He’s not sure they’re getting anywhere, but it feels better than spinning their wheels like he and Sam have with Abaddon. Cas won’t be coming along, but Dean feels better that he and Sam are there for him, and that he’s not doing this alone. 

The sadness in Cas’ eyes when he talks about gathering his own faction doesn’t escape him. Those are fresh wounds Cas is tearing open, and he wishes he could spare him that, even if Dean thinks maybe that pain will help Cas be the leader the angels need.

One of them should be able to do good. 

Dean pretends not to notice the way Cas and Sam whisper when he goes to the john. He resents it enough that he feels the increasingly familiar surge of adrenaline, and maybe he goes a little tunnel-vision for a minute before he reminds himself that this is Sam and Cas, and they’re not actually conspiring against him. They want to help him.

Probably. 

He listens at the bathroom door when he finishes washing his hands, but the only thing he can make out is Cas telling Sam to keep an eye on him. 

* * *

Dean slips out when Sam falls asleep. Cas is waiting for him outside. 

“Keeping tabs on me, Cas?” he asks, the humor in his voice a little thinner than he wants it to be. 

“I was watching over you.” There’s a sad earnestness in his voice, and it occurs to Dean that if Cas had his wings, he wouldn’t have been standing out here under the awning. He’d have been in there, sitting on Dean’s bed like he used to do.

“Are you ready? For tomorrow?” 

Cas is hesitant, but he nods. “I have the materials I need to call the remaining angels. When Metatron moves, I believe we will be ready.” 

“Good,” Dean says, and puts his hand on Cas’ arm. A moment later he steps in closer and rests his other hand on Cas’ hip. 

They kiss in the dark, two figures standing against Heaven and Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many and myriad thanks to 51stCenturyFox, who may or may not know what's on my right forearm right now. 
> 
> Title is from REO Speedwagon's song of the same name. 
> 
> And man. Let me just say how much of a relief it was to get to 9x18. Oof.


	13. Baby I'm the Walking Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Dean get called up to Sioux Falls to help Jody Mills with a vampire problem, the Mark of Cain intensifies, and things go down in the Impala.

They’re in Nebraska, on their way back from Utah, when Dean’s phone rings. He passes it over to Sam. 

“Hey, Jody. Yeah, no, Dean’s driving. Seriously? Yeah, of course. Hang on a sec.” Sam pulls out his own phone, does something in an app, then shoves it back in his pocket. “We’re out on the road now, but we can probably be there in about five, six hours? Yeah, okay. See you then.” 

Dean raises his eyebrows. “What’s going on in Sioux Falls?”

“Jody’s pretty sure it’s vampires.”

* * *

The girl -- Annie, Alex, whoever she is -- turns out to be a real piece of work. It goes with the territory. Blood slaves almost always have a fucked-up sense of loyalty, and she’s been with this nest for the better part of a decade. She calls the dead vamp in Jody’s trunk her brother.

Hell, the girl doesn’t even know her own name. 

Dean gets it. Vampires are crazy persuasive when they want to be, and when you’re stuck with someone long enough…

His eyes flick to Sam, just for a second. He tells himself he’s imagining the sympathy going on between these two, but is he? Sammy ran away twice before he stayed -- once with that dog and once to college -- and didn’t look for Dean while he was lost in Purgatory. Sam’s even as much as said that when Dean’s number is up, it’s up now.

 _Enough_ , he scolds himself. They’re on a case, and he can worry about his own shitty family dynamics later.

* * *

If Sam weren’t here, this interrogation might go a lot different. He wants to go a little more hands-on, especially when he starts laying on the resentful big brother crap. Dean never had a little sister, but all this shit about sheltering the girl because she was “better” than a bunch of blood-sucking freaks makes him want to dig into this vamp’s skin and bone with his pocket knife just to watch it scream. 

_Sam was always better than you, too. Dad sheltered him. What’s that make you in this equation, huh?_

Still, he’s on the phone as soon as the penny drops that Alex is a damn _lure_ , and by the time they connect with Jody, Dean can tell himself that this -- fighting the fight -- is what puts him above animals like this douche.

He enjoys the shit out of the kill.

* * *

Jody’s on the ground when they pull up to the cabin, and Dean’s sure as hell she’s dead and cold until she starts moving, talking, and demanding to come back to the nest with them. 

If he’s going to describe her right now, he’d probably go with “banged-up and emotionally compromised.” When he thinks about it, that’s probably every reason for her to come along. She fits right in. 

Sam spends the drive back to Nebraska making sure she’s not concussed and schooling her on the lore. 

No amount of lore, though, is going to instill any kind of battle discipline. Dean knows she’s trained and can take care of herself, but Sioux Falls isn’t a war zone, and the look in Jody’s eyes when he tells her Alex is second priority tells him not to bank on her for support. 

He doesn’t like it, but the odds with Jody on board are better than the odds if he leaves her out here, and he’s pretty sure she’d come charging in the minute his back is turned anyway. He’s still going in with a liability on his hands, but she’s a liability that can take a vamp’s head off, so that’s better than nothing.

They clear the first floor easy and leave Jody to stand guard. It’s a good idea until it isn’t, which is more or less the moment two vamps get the drop on him and Sam. Dean barely even sees the lumber when it connects with his head, and he’s out before he hits the ground.

* * *

The pain is Dean’s first clue that he should stay as still as he can. The smell of blood is his second. He catches something about packing a lunch, and something about brothers, but he’s not all here yet.

He waits and listens, puts the pieces together. They’re tapping Sam, bleeding him dry. He’s got no way of knowing for sure how far along that is, or how they’re doing it.

“Tapped this keg,” one of the vamps says. “Get the short-haired one ready. Time to finish this.”

The kick is brutal, and it’s everything Dean can do to stay limp and wait for the son of a bitch to try and haul him bodily. When he does, though, it’s beautiful. He slams the syringe right into the vamp’s chest and pumps him full of dead man’s blood. It’s no 2x4 to the face, but payback is payback. 

One down, one to go. 

The other vamp gives him a scuffle, even gets him pinned. He’s strong -- inhuman -- and Dean wonders if maybe this is it. Maybe this is how he and Sam go out. Nothing heroic. Just a dinky little hunt in Nebraska. 

_Yeah right. Check this out, asshole._

All those lines of tension in him draw tight and white hot. The vamp’s not even close to prepared for what he’s in for, looks stunned when Dean turns the tables on him, keeps trying to scramble out instead of accepting that this is the natural order of things. 

“Look at me!” he shouts, because he wants to see the lights go out. He wants this vamp to know who took him down. He wants a witness to the thing he's becoming. “Look at me, bitch!” 

The machete blade slices through flesh and bone. Blood splatters Dean’s face and the wall where the vamp’s neck used to be. He feels a surge of satisfaction. Fulfillment. Almost perfect, except for the parts of him that want it to stop because they can’t 

_Sammy’s hurt. That’s his blood I’m smelling. That’s his heartbeat, going all wrong._

It’s bad. Sam’s pale and weak and busted up, but it’s nothing a couple of square meals and a couple of days of rest can’t fix. Dean starts to give him shit about not having his back, but Sam cuts him off. Because, shit, Jody’s still downstairs. 

* * *

Jody, it turns out, is one bad-ass motherfucker.

* * *

Out of the four of them, Dean’s really the only one in any condition to haul a shaking baby vamp out of the house. Not that Sam or Jody listens until he threatens to handcuff them to each other through a gap in the plumbing and leave them there. 

Annie -- or Alex, he’s still not quite sure what to call her -- is in a pretty bad way. He knows what it’s like, being overwhelmed and hungry. He’s careful not to leave an opening to his throat or wrists or any bare skin as he helps her up out of the basement and out to the car. 

“You bite me, or Jody, or Sam and we’re gonna have a problem,” he tells her as he opens the trunk. “You get me?”

Her mouth says yes, but he knows her body’s saying no. His heartbeat will be drowning out his voice about now, probably. She keeps doing this thing with her mouth, like her teeth want to get bared without her realizing it. She’s standing there with her arms crossed like an annoyed teenager, but the look in her eyes says she’s sizing him up. 

Dean’s fingers itch for the grip of his machete, but he can hear Sam and Jody coming out of the house, and knows neither of them will believe him if he says she made a move. 

He opens the rear passenger door, and gets her settled in.

None of them talk for the three hours it takes him to get them back to Jody’s cabin except for when Dean stops at the first gas station he finds on the way. Everybody wants something except for Annie-Alex. Dean brings Jody a coffee and a sandwich, drops a bag of snacks and a big bottle of Gatorade in Sam’s lap, and keeps the half pint of of whiskey in his jacket to himself. 

* * *

Jody finds him on the porch. Sam’s sacked out, and Alex is sweating out the bad blood. He’s surprised Jody’s not asleep too, given the day she’s had, but Dean guesses this is something maternal kicking in, like she can’t stop until she’s sure everyone under her roof is okay. 

“Didn’t think it’d be so violent,” she says, sitting down next to him, cradling a mug of coffee in her hands. 

“Yeah, the cure’s a rough trip.” He takes a swallow from the bottle, then offers it to Jody. 

She takes it, drinks, passes it back, looks him over. “How come you’re still up?” 

“Couldn’t sleep. Occupational hazard.” 

She smiles. “I bet.” 

“That’s gonna be a hell of a shiner.” 

“Oh, I’ve had worse.”

Dean double-takes. “Seriously?”

“Nope,” Jody says, and shakes her head. “Dean, I didn’t even get into fights in school. Now look at me.”

“Yep. You’re a big tough hunter with a scar collection now.” 

She elbows him in the ribs. 

Dean smiles. 

“You sure you’re going to be okay on the road tomorrow?” Jody asks. “Your brother lost a lot of blood.”

“He’ll pull through. What about you? We can stick around if we need to.” 

Jody shakes her head. “We’ll be okay.” She squeezes his shoulder. “Get some sleep if you can, Dean. There’s blankets on the couch for you.”

“Thanks, Jody.”

The porch door closes behind him. He should try and sleep, but he’s still remembering how the kill felt. How _he_ felt. 

Crowley was right about one thing: the Mark, the blade...those things made him stronger. Even without the blade in his hand, he’d been able to physically overpower a vampire and take its head off while fighting resistance. No swing, no physics. Just brute force. 

Dean wonders what else he’s capable of, now. Knows that’s a dangerous road. He remembers Sam’s thing with demon blood. This is different, though, isn’t it? He doesn’t need a fix. The thing he wants, the thing that makes him stronger, is already a part of him. 

He needs that part if he’s going to win against Abaddon, or help Cas against Metatron. He needs all the mojo he can get. 

Dean gets up, wanders a little way out into the woods until he finds a smooth-barked poplar that won’t grind his knuckles off. 

_Is that really a problem, though?_ He wonders. _I took a 2x4 to the face. I should look like Jody right now._

He’s getting ready to find out when his phone buzzes in his pocket. 

“Hey, Cas. What’s going on?” He looks at the tree. The tension in him grates at being deferred. He turns back toward Jody’s cabin. 

“I’ve assembled a force of angels.”

“You don’t sound happy about that.”

“I’m not.” Cas sighs. “Dean. I’m no leader. I’m going to fail. Metatron --” 

“Is a dick. Metatron’s powerful, but anything he does, anything he says? He’s as bad as Crowley.” Dean sounds more confident than he feels, probably because he needs this to be true almost as much as Castiel does. “This time is different. You’re not doing this for you.”

“I can’t be wrong again.” 

Dean hears the wound in Cas’ voice, recognizes it. For an angel, he sounds a hell of a lot like a man, lost in a sea of impossible responsibility. 

“I know, Cas.” 

Dean opens the Impala’s driver’s seat and gets in. He closes the door, then lays back so his head's by the passenger door. He’s got to bend his legs, but not enough to be uncomfortable. Hell, Sam’s slept on these seats. Even if this car hadn’t been his home, Dean can’t imagine finding anything short of a minivan that could accommodate the both of them as well. 

“What do you need from me?” Dean asks. “How can I help?”

“I miss my wings,” Cas whispers. “I miss you. It’s terrible to feel this lonely with my brothers and sisters. I am...I am not like them anymore.”

“Are you alone?” 

“Yes.”

Dean closes his eyes. “Then imagine me with you. What are you doing?”

“Sitting.”

“Where?”

“On the edge of a hotel bed. They...I don’t need to stay here, but sometimes I do anyway.”

“Okay. I want you to take off your coat and your jacket.” 

There is a rustling of clothing and a little huff of breath. “Now what?” 

“Lay down on the bed. Get comfortable. Close your eyes.” 

“Okay.”

Dean can feel his heart beating in his chest, just a little too fast. This is a new line for him to cross, strangely intimate. He thinks about Cas’ call to him, but this is different. Cas is in his hands, now. 

“I’m here, Cas. I’m touching your face, just fingertips on your cheek, laying next to you and…well, I guess I’m watching over you for once.”

It’s a pretty picture. He can imagine Castiel’s dark lashes, his soft brow, the slow rise and fall of his chest. 

“I like watching you, but I like kissing you more, so I cup your cheek and lean down, brush my lips against yours real light at first before I kiss you. Real easy, then deeper when you open up to me. You want that, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Good.” Dean smiles, imagining Cas’s lips parting for his tongue, his body rising just a little for the kiss. “I’m gonna let my hand wander down your neck, then, to your chest and let it rest over your heart. I’m not holding you down, you know that, but I like to touch you.”

“I...like to be touched,” Castiel says, like it’s a difficult thing to acknowledge. 

“I want to undress you, Cas. Real slow. Just one button at a time until your shirt is open, while I kiss you. I’ll pull it up and untuck it so I can run my palms over your stomach and your chest. Your skin feels so good under my hands. You want me to undo your belt, too?”

“Please, yes.”

“Yeah?” Dean grins. “I might tease you a little, you know. Like, I could touch your belt like I’m thinking about it, or maybe slide my fingers under the waistband, but maybe I won’t undo the buckle right away. I’m thinking maybe I’d like to see you squirm a little.”

Cas makes a little noise in his throat. 

“Mm, yeah. You want me in there, don’t you?”

“Dean, please.”

“Well, okay. Since you asked so nice.” Dean holds his phone to his ear with his shoulder and undoes his own belt. He’s already nursing a semi, and he’s going to want better access pretty soon. “I’m gonna unbuckle you, but then I’m gonna run my fingertips over your cock through your pants. I want to know how hard you are for me already.”

“So hard,” Cas gasps. 

“Yeah? Already? So your dick twitches when I stroke at it, real light? When I scratch over the fabric with my nails?”

There’s another noise from Cas again, and between that and his own hand Dean’s just as hard now. 

He wiggles his jeans down as far as he dares -- which isn’t far, what with the cabin being so close -- and gives himself a good, long stroke.

“I’m gonna unbutton you now, Cas. And I’m gonna undo your zipper, just a few teeth at a time, because once your cock gets free, it’s gonna help do the work for me, isn’t that right?” 

“Oh yes.”

“What are you wearing underneath, Cas?”

“Boxers. Not the white ones. The knit kind.”

“Like I wear?”

“Y-yes. Gray.”

Dean sucks in a breath through his teeth. His hand is working harder now. “Nice. I like the way your dick presses up against that ribbed fabric. I like it so much I’m gonna get down between your knees and brush up against it with my lips. Can you feel my breath?”

“Yes.”

“And my tongue, when I lick up the cloth?”

“Oh, Dean, yes.”

“And my hand when I palm you and squeeze?” 

“Please, yes.”

Dean’s got a rhythm now, and his hips are moving with it because this is a good fucking lay even if it’s just over the phone. 

“I’m going to put my fingers under the waistband and pull everything down to your knees so I can see you. And touch you. And taste you.”

“Taste me, Dean. Yes. I want your mouth.”

“Oh, I bet you do. I bet you want me to run my tongue around the head of your dick and taste the salt and slick in your slit.”

The noise Cas makes is insane, and Dean loves it. He squeezes himself, pumps faster with his hand. Not so much he’s going to peak fast, but he wants to feel good, and Cas feels good, so everybody wins here.

“I bet you want me to lick you from balls to tip. How does it feel when I do that?”

“In-incredible. Oh. Oh, Dean.” 

“It’s even better when I take you in my mouth. Because my mouth is hot for you, Cas. It’s wet and its ready and my lips are closed tight around your dick so I can suck. I’m even going to put your hand in my hair so you can show me what you like.” 

“So close,” Cas whimpers. “Dean, I want to.”

“You want to come in my mouth?” His voice is rough and his balls are tight, and it’s not going to be long now for either of them. 

“Yes.” 

“Because I’m going to let you. I’m going to let you fuck my mouth, and I’m going to make all kinds of wicked sounds while you do, because I know you can feel me humming real low, and believe me, I know how good that feels. I want you to come in my mouth, Cas. I want you to fill me up and make me swallow you down and --” 

He hears Cas come with a sound that wants to be multiple words at once. Dean bites his lip and lets his own eyes flutter and imagines the way Cas would lose himself under his hands and mouth. 

With his free hand, he opens up the glovebox, pulls out the pack of tissues he knows is there, rips it open with his teeth, then grabs a couple. “Cas.”

Dean catches his load in the tissues. He’s shaking in good ways, trying and only mostly succeeding in keeping the phone by his ear. He squeezes himself, gives himself a couple of finishing strokes, milking every last bit of his climax. “Oh. Oh, fuck. Cas.”

He’s panting. He feels so good, like he’s just been hit with a bus full of awesome. “Cas?”

“Mmmn.” 

“You good?” 

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Dean shifts in the seat, pulls his jeans back up. “Good.” 

“Thank you. It’s strange, but...” Cas pauses. “I think perhaps I needed that. With you.”

“Not so lonely now, huh?” 

“No.” 

“Good. Me neither.” Dean rubs at the Mark, pulls his sleeve down over it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Bloodletting" by Concrete Blonde. I was worried the song was too recent, and then I realized it came out TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO. So there's that. 
> 
> Some lines/scenes in this fic come directly from 9x19 (Alex Annie Alexis Ann). 
> 
> Special thanks as always to 51stCenturyFox, my incredibly kind and long-suffering beta, who got me hooked on Jam as a concept and says I can write all of the phone sex blowjobs I want. So.


	14. With Your Impure Mouths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel struggles with his status as Commander and questions of sins, past and present.

Angels do not sleep.

Angels labor, angels fight, angels do their duties with selfless non-concern, for pride and self-regard are dangerous. Those things make Lucifers of angels. 

And oh, Castiel burns.

* * *

His angels are nothing if not efficient. 

He helps them choose an adequate building, large and industrial, and convertible to their purpose, and soon they have filled it with equipment: computers and maps and telephones. Castiel himself takes an office where he can see the work floor, but also where he can be separate. It is convenient, and the angels not only accept it but encourage it. 

A Commander, they say, must have a place in which to keep counsel, and to plan.

He does not like this name. He distrusts it. He thinks on Metatron’s words. If he were human, he thinks, the worry would keep him awake.

* * *

It is Benjamin, who is rapidly becoming Castiel’s body man, who discovers the journal. 

“Castiel?” he asks, voice hushed and eyes wide as he lays it on the desk. “Have you lost your senses?”

Castiel does not speak. He averts his eyes. Benjamin is right to confront him on this. Benjamin is a good angel, and a good worker, and trustworthy. Castiel should hear his counsel and bear the blows his words will strike.

“Have you...do you…”

“You ask if I’ve defiled myself.”

“Yes.”

Castiel would pray to his Father for strength, but he should not. Not for this. He returns Benjamin’s gaze. 

“Benjamin, my sins are beyond confession. I have fallen so many times. I have slain our brothers and sisters, defied and subverted the orders of Heaven, dared to make myself God, played host to Leviathan, and burned the light out of any who stood against me in the very fields of Heaven. You know these things.”

“Yes.”

“Which are the greater sins? Those I speak of, or the ones which you have read in this book?”

He watches Benjamin struggle with the question. 

“Sins are sins.”

“They are,” Castiel says as he picks up his journal and turns it over in his hands. He should burn it, but he knows he will not.

“You repented of these other crimes.”

“Have I?” He feels Theo's stolen grace burning away inside him, a dirty secret he's surprised Benjamin and the others can't perceive. "The only thing that makes me better than Malachi and Bartholomew is that I haven't asked you to kill."

Benjamin stares at Castiel with an expression that might be disappointment if he let his face articulate it.

“Yes, Benjamin. I have defiled myself,” Castiel says as he lays both the book aside. “I do not repent of it. But I am also not Semjaza. My wrongs are my own, and should you be tempted, I will warn you against them.”

“You do not have to be Semjaza. If the others see…”

Of course. Because Castiel is a leader, now. An example. Oh, how he did not want this. 

“Then you must not let them see, Benjamin. Conceal this, for the good of your brothers and sisters.”

Castiel closes his eyes. Benjamin is a good soldier. A good angel. He should not have to blacken his tongue like this. Sin is sin. Corruption spreads. 

“I will do this thing, Castiel,” Benjamin says, and looks away.

* * * 

“It is important that you continue to walk among humanity,” Castiel explains to a handful of his angels: the ones who adapted most easily to the fall. “Humans have eyes. They notice things. We may see the shape of Metatron’s plans in their words and their movements.”

“And Metatron’s angels, Commander? Should we mingle with them as well?”

Castiel smiles. “Yes, if you meet them. Do not threaten them. Never strike first. Fight only if necessary. Remember them as brothers and sisters. Show them our cause is just and that we seek a peaceful solution. Some of you already know well that if they are sincere with you, we can give them clemency and aid. Bring me the friendly ones. I will meet them.”

An angel in the body of a young woman pipes up at the back. “And the prideful ones, Commander? Those who would strike us?”

“Do what you must,” Castiel says, sorrow rising up in him. “But bring them to me if you can. I would meet them as well.”

* * *

Castiel writes poetry.

He writes it in Hebrew because the words he needs do not exist in Enochian. 

_Chamad. Qal. Piel._

Greek, too, because he likes the sounds it makes.

_Epithumia. Omorfos._

He writes about Dean’s skin, how it is soft in some places and rough in others. 

Leaving aside the subject matter, the act itself is aberrant. Angels are neither creatures of privacy nor agents of creation. Yes, they build -- he twinges, thinking of Hael and the Grand Canyon -- but they do this for the glory of their Father, at his direction.

They do not hide themselves at the top of stairwells just beneath the roof access and make art for pleasure, away from the eyes of their brothers and sisters.

Castiel shoves his journal aside and rubs his face with his hands. It’s a human gesture, but it expresses well his distress at having these capacities that run against his nature and his purpose.

“Father,” he whispers, unsure if he is angry at himself or committing a grave sin. “We are supposed to be your hands. Your hands should be incorruptible. We should not be at war.”

The words go into nothing. Are nothing. His Father is gone, and even if he were not, what would he have to say to the angel who undid prophecy upon prophecy for the sake of a pair of human brothers and their moral philosophy? 

“Did you know? When you made Gadreel, did you know that he would fail? Did you know how Lucifer’s heart would turn? I cannot imagine this escaped your awareness, but I do not understand why it should be as it is. Why do you keep remaking me when I flout your laws?”

He waits in perfect stillness for an hour for an answer. When there is none, he calls Dean. He nearly hangs up before the call connects. Humans sleep. Dean should be sleeping.

“Cas? What’s up?” 

“How are you, Dean?”

He hears Dean let out a little breath, as if he’s amused by the question. “Honest answer? I feel like a gun at a knife fight.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Both.” 

Castiel can hear the sounds of the bunker across the line, Dean’s footsteps, the click of a bedroom door. “Sorry. I think Sam’s awake. Too much Gatorade. Anyway.” 

“Did something happen?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“I’m glad.” What Castiel really means when he says this is _it troubles me that you don’t go into detail._ “Will Sam be alright?”

“Yeah. He lost some blood. Vamps tried to tap him out. I took care of it.”

“Sam?”

“And the vamps.” Dean sighs. There’s a faint creak of furniture, probably the bed. “Cas, I...I mean it. The gun at a knife fight thing. It’s good, because Abaddon...I’m gonna need to bring that kind of power.”

“Yes. You will.” 

“But I’m not sleeping. And sometimes I just...I space out, Cas. Thinking about the kill and the blade and all of it. Killing Magnus.” 

He wants to tell Dean to be careful, but it would accomplish nothing. Neither of them has the luxury of taking care now. Careful is the very antithesis of what he and Dean are doing, both in the sense of their individual battles against Heaven and Hell, and the fact that they are fighting both sides concurrently. 

“There is a proverb I learned that may apply here,” Castiel says, uncertain. 

“Oh yeah?” Dean’s smile is apparent in his voice. “Let’s hear it.”

Cas licks his lips. “If you can’t run, you walk. If you can’t walk, you crawl. If you can’t crawl--”

“You find someone to carry you,” Dean finishes. 

“Yes.”

“First you get a Star Wars reference, now you’re quoting Firefly? Where are you camped out, Oz?”

“No.” It’s a very strange question, and Castiel scrambles to understand it. “Why Oz?”

“Just a hunch. Nevermind.” 

They are silent for a moment before Dean speaks up. “So. I’m guessing you called me for a reason. Something going on, or is this just a social call?”

“I was…” Cas starts, and isn’t sure how to finish the sentence. “I suppose I was thinking about you, and decided I would rather hear you instead. Is that alright?”

“That’s fine, Cas. We don’t even need to bring your wings into it if you don’t want to.”

Castiel smiles. “That the attribute which should signal my innate sexlessness should become our euphemism for desire is strangely satisfying.”

“What can I say? I’m irresistable.”

_Much to my spiritual detriment._

“I think I would kiss you if you were here, Dean. I don’t know what else I would do, but I think I would enjoy kissing you right now, and sharing your breath.” 

“I’d like that.”

“Would it lead to more?” Castiel asks. He glances down past the banister and listens. He should not do this here, where someone could overhear. “Could I put my fingers in your hair, perhaps?”

“From the back?” Dean answers. “Maybe dig your fingers in a little?”

“And pull your head back, yes. Because I want to kiss your throat and mark my claim on you.”

Dean makes a little sound and Castiel feels the changes in his vessel: the flush of skin, the rush of blood in his ears. He could dissociate from it, switch it off, be an angel. He should. He should quit this, confess his errors to Dean Winchester, and hope that they can go back to the way things were before.

Instead, he shoves his journal into his coat pocket, opens the roof access, and climbs out into the night.

“Still there, Cas?”

“Yes.” 

“So, uh, you’ve kind of got me hanging here.” 

Castiel thinks back to the hotel in Utah. “I’m trying to decide where to mark you.”

“ _Oh_. Um.”

“Just right of your Adam’s apple, I think. Did you know it’s only ignorance of the Hebrew language that associates it with the fall? There is no evil in it. It --” 

Dean lets out an almost pained laugh. “Oh man, that’s…sorry, Cas, but...” He laughs again, keeps laughing. 

“What?” 

“I’m coming apart at the seams -- like seriously, man, I’m like a ten ton truck headed straight for a playground levels of fucked -- but I’m having phone sex with an angel, and the pillow talk’s about Hebrew and how my throat isn’t evil.”

Castiel smiles. “It is a curious juxtaposition.” 

“Yeah, and if you were here I’d probably try and change your opinion about my throat.”

“I don’t und--” he starts, then it clicks. “Oh.”

Dean’s voice lowers a little. “I could be on my knees. You could keep your hands in my hair for it.”

Castiel sucks a breath in through his teeth. 

“I could nuzzle your dick through the front of your pants while you play with my hair.” 

There would be warm breath, yes, and the scrape of stubble on fabric, and the heat of Dean’s arousal. A hint of sweat in his hair even, barely perceptible. Castiel traces the front of his trousers with his fingers and lets out a shaky breath. His vessel is very receptive.

“You’re getting hard, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” He nods, even though Dean isn’t here to see.

“Good. Yeah. Okay.” Dean makes a little gasping noise, and Castiel can tell he’s already touching himself. “I’m gonna undo those pants, Cas. Let ‘em drop down your legs so I can squeeze your dick through your underwear.” 

His vessel’s knees go a little weak at the image. Castiel leans against the elevator service shed and tries very hard not to fumble his belt, his trouser buttons, or his zipper. He doesn’t let the trousers fall as in the fantasy, but he does begin to work himself with his hand. 

“I’m going to tease you with my hands, just rub you through the cloth even though I could get you out right now. I mean, my mouth’s right here, and I’m licking my lips and everything. How long are you going to let me do this, huh? Before you tighten up those fingers in my hair and --” 

“Do it,” Cas whimpers. “I want...I need your mouth.”

“Tell me to do it, then.”

Castiel is aware, under his arousal, that he is conflicted; Dean is inconsistent in his response to dominant sexual behavior. Given his insistence in the moment, however, perhaps it’s the most appropriate course. “I said open your _mouth_ , Dean.” 

“Oh fuck. Yes.”

“Tell me,” Cas says, surer now, “tell me how you suck my cock.”

“I -- oh fuck -- okay. I open my mouth, just like you tell me to.” Dean’s breathing is ragged. “And I look up at you. I look you in the eyes because I want you to see me when I suck you off.” 

“I see you, Dean. I see you and I push deeper.”

“God, yeah.”

“How much control are you giving me, Dean? Do you want me to fuck your mouth?”

The noise Dean makes isn’t even words. It makes Castiel ache between his legs, suddenly desperate.

“Yes or no, Dean.”

“ _Yes._ ”

The image is as vivid as anything, and Castiel lets the words spill from his mouth as his hand speeds up. 

“I love you on your knees on the ground in front of me, with your eyes open, with your hair in my hands and your wet lips on...on me.” 

“Oh Cas, oh _fuck_ , Cas, _yes_.”

“I love you jerking off while I use your mouth, Dean, because you love to give yourself to me like this, don’t you? You hate being out of control, but you give yourself to me. Will you swallow me down? When I come, Dean, will you swallow me?”

“I want to, Cas,” he manages between short breaths. “I want it. I want you in my mouth. Give it to me Cas. Come on. Come for me, Cas. Make me swallow you down.”

Castiel’s orgasm is a sublimely layered thing, and he observes it with wonderment because he still doesn’t understand it fully. His vessel’s peak arousal and climax is pleasurable within the wavelengths of human perception, and the flood of chemicals within that body trigger an emotional response: joy, longing, attachment, gratitude. 

Those ripple further because he is open to them, and they flood his celestial body with different sensations he does not know names for because they were never taught to him by his Father or his brothers and sisters. They drive at the core of him, though, and the mirrors of those human feelings burst out from the blazing center of his heart.

He wonders what is the greater blasphemy: this act, or the way the consummation of it makes him doubt that this is blasphemous at all if he has these unnamed faculties.

_Semjaza’s sin was in tempting the others and forming a pact, he tries to tell himself. It was in fathering Nephilim in subversion of our Father’s plan._

The sound of Dean’s climax brings Castiel back into the moment. His post-climax body responds first to the hitch of Dean’s breath, then the vulnerability in the exhalation that contains Castiel’s name, and the way it hits him in his celestial body like a prayer. 

“Wow,” Dean says, still panting. “That was...intense.”

“Yes.” Castiel tidies himself and puts his clothing back in order. 

“Damn.” 

“I have a question, Dean. In Utah, you seemed very angry about...what we just did.”

“The kinky stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. Yeah.” Dean takes a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m not really that into it. I mean, I like it like _this_. Playing it out on the phone is okay because it’s not...you know. It’s not for real. Girls and fuzzy cuffs? That’s kind of hot, but I don’t really want you to hold me down or choke me with your dick or whatever. I get tied up and hit enough in real life, and it’s not like there’s any question about whether you can take me apart in a fight.”

Castiel lowers his head at the memories. Naomi’s room, killing Dean over and over. Beating Dean within an inch of his life. No, there was no question before. But with the Mark and his own burning grace? He’s not so certain now.

“Anyway, Cas, what I’m saying is that I like that you don’t, even if you can. Hell, I like the little bruises you leave on me with your fingers when you come. I like it when you mark me. I like the idea that you can manhandle me a little and put me exactly where you want me. Those things feel good. Like, really good. Is that okay? Because, you know, if you wanted to try --”

“No. That’s very...very okay.” Castiel knows he would flush a little if he were human. “I just wanted to be sure I understood.”

“Yeah, I maybe sent some mixed messages there.”

Castiel refrains from suggesting that Dean is very good at obscuring his true meaning a good deal of the time.

“Do you think you and Sam are getting close to Abaddon?” 

“Maybe. We’re going to head to Illinois in the morning to see if Sam missed any hints while he was out there. It’s not much, but it’s something. What about you? Any progress?”

“I have many eyes on the problem,” Castiel says, failing to hide his weariness.

Dean chuckles. “You don’t sound happy about that.”

“If it will help me stop Metatron, it does not matter whether I like it. It’s--”

“A means to an end?” Dean finishes.

_And this is why I burn_ , Castiel thinks, full of pain and love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to 51stCenturyFox for being swift and brutal.
> 
> This chapter references not just some things happening in late S9 but also the [Book of Enoch](http://www.ccel.org/c/charles/otpseudepig/enoch/ENOCH_1.HTM), the first part of which talks about a group of angels who form a pact to marry human women and father Nephilim. It ends badly, as one might expect. Title is from this section.
> 
> Translations to Castiel's words: 
> 
> Chamad = to desire, take pleasure in, covet  
> Qal = to desire  
> Piel = to desire greatly, precious
> 
> Epithumia = passionate desire  
> Omorfos = beautiful (masculine)


	15. Jabbing Cuts The Numbness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean slips further down the rabbit hole, Cas is distant by circumstance, and a Queen falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some significant borrowing in here from "King of the Damned." Let the record reflect that this material is not even remotely mine. It's just the awesome thing on which I'm hanging some ideas of my own.

“I just think we shouldn’t have left like that is all.”

Dean clenches his jaw. They’re out of the suburbs and on real highway now and Sam’s still going on about Chicago.

“So, what, you want to go back? Want me to drop you off somewhere?”

“What?” Sam gives him a double-take. “No. Look, I’m just saying. Monsters running a city? It’s kind of a big deal.”

“Yeah, and when we’re done with Abaddon and Metatron and Crowley, maybe we can call in an airstrike. I mean, Chicago’s already burned once, right?”

Sam doesn’t answer, so Dean glances over at him. “You’re worried about that kid.”

“Yeah. Ennis. I mean, he shot that guy. The shifters know his face. Hell, we found him when we were checking out that club. I don’t think he’s the type to walk away.”

Dean scoffs. “I wonder why. You didn’t exactly hold anything back. ‘I’m Sam and this is Dean, and we hunt monsters. Sorry your girlfriend’s dead and you can’t throw a rock without hitting something supernatural.’ Dude, ten bucks says the first thing he did when we were out of his sight was lock and load.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, but I kinda went from t-ball to sawed-offs. It’s a given.”

Sam grimaces, glares out the window.

“Look, Sam, if Ennis goes hunter, it’s on him, not you.”

“I know. I just...we should have done more.”

Dean flexes his right forearm on reflex. “Yeah, well, we can’t save everyone, can we, Sammy?”

* * *

Whatever Dean was expecting from Cas’ operation, it sure as hell wasn’t this. It’s like some kind of nerve center from 24 or something. 

It puts his hackles up, from the stuffy little guy in red to the blinking lights to Cas with his own little _office_ like he’s some kind of cop show detective. 

And maybe some of it is the fact that he knows -- he goddamn _knows_ \-- that they’re not going to have any kind of privacy in this place where he can bleed out all the shit that’s going on inside of him, or that the only touch he’s going to get from Cas is that half-assed hug that he pulled out of because, hello, Sam. 

And angels. So many goddamn _angels_.

But then Cas gives him a little present: somebody to break. 

Which is kinda intimate in a “here, let me buy you a lap dance” way. It’s weird in the same ways, too. Like, if he goes for it and enjoys it, is that the right answer or the wrong one? 

Fuck it. He’s going to enjoy this.

* * *

He does not get to enjoy it.

“Dean, wait up.”

“I don’t need help your help, Sammy. I’ve got this.” 

“I didn’t say you don’t.” Sam catches up with them -- Dean and the brown-haired angel whose name is escaping him at the moment -- and falls into formation like he’s supposed to be there. “But if Cas couldn’t get intel out of him, maybe it couldn’t hurt to have me in the room.”

Dean frowns. “So what, you want to play good cop?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Dean turns away, doesn’t let Sam see him close his eyes when he sighs. Sam shouldn’t be here. Sam shouldn’t see. Sam’s going to get in the way. “Fine.”

“It’s this one here,” the brown-haired angel says as she opens the door. 

Dean gives her a wink and goes on in. 

Ezra’s vessel isn’t all that impressive, though Dean’s more than aware that the size of the package can be deceiving. Shackles’ll help.

Dean likes the way the angel blade feels in his hand. Likes the way the adrenaline starts to rise in his blood. Likes the idea of cutting this son of a bitch and seeing what it looks like when he bleeds.

But he’s getting ahead of himself. 

“Castiel sent humans?” Ezra scoffs.

Dean licks his lips, doesn’t rise to it. Instead he just starts an easy pace around the angel in the middle of the room. 

_Yeah that’s right. This party’s all about you._

“So. Ezra. Word on the street is you’ve got an inside-line on Metatron. So how’s about you save us all a little bit of trouble and spill.” He taps the blade against his palm. 

“This is a joke.”

“You see me laughing?

Tap. Tap. 

It would be so easy. One thrust to the chest. None of the satisfaction of breaking the little asshole, but watching the light burn out of him, face-to-face? Watching it die and fade? 

“You’re wasting your time. I’ve got nothing to say.”

“We disagree.” Tap.

It’s the arrogance, Dean thinks. That’s the thing that pisses him off about angels. The way every single angel here just looks at him like he’s nothing. Like Heaven can just do whatever it wants with him. Like he’s some dumb animal. 

“There’s no use torturing me. I am a trained commando.”

“Wow,” Dean says. The blade is warm in his hand, and if this fuck is a trained commando, he’ll eat his goddamn boots. “Well, you just asked me to dance.” 

He moves, red like fire, blade aimed for Ezra’s heart, but Sam shouts his name and knocks him clean out of his perfect headspace. 

_Sam’s here. I forgot about Sam._

Sam who calls him off. Sam who does that thing and turns it around so Dean has no excuse to lay another hand on the guy. 

And okay, sure, it’s good intel -- or lack of intel, or the shadow of intel, maybe -- but the adrenaline doesn’t quite go away. It’s just...waiting. Pooling up inside. 

Dean tries not to look at his brother. Tries not to think about where this is going to go if Sam keeps holding him back. 

* * *

That he’s more angry than afraid when Ezra turns up dead should probably worry him. Instead, he mostly just wants to take it out on the bastard who stole his kill. 

Which is a non-fucking-starter with Sam following him around while they dig into Cas’ operation to try and figure out who the traitor is. 

“I don’t see why we’re not dragging all of them down there,” he gripes at Sam in one of the hallways. “This soft-touch bullshit isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Yeah, and alienating Cas’ entire camp will? We’re trying to find a bad apple, not make more of them.” Sam frowns, and even when Dean turns away he can can feel him staring.

“Okay, so what now? It not like angels have bunks to search. I’d be surprised if even half of those angels own more than a blade.”

Sam sighs. “Yeah. Cas’ office?” 

“I guess.”

Except Cas is gone. And so’s Benjamin, and that brown-haired angel. 

Dean doesn’t much care for the looks the flock keeps giving them. Cas talks a good game about humanity, and they follow him, but he can see the disdain there. The questions. Like they can’t fathom why Cas would waste his time with a couple of apes.

They don’t even bother to tell him and Sam where Cas is. 

He should probably talk to Cas. Cas could talk him down a little, maybe. 

_Where the fuck is Cas?_

Dean doesn’t know how long he spaces out. Doesn’t even realize he has until Sam snaps him out of it because his phone is ringing.

Crowley. 

And as much as he hates Crowley, the words “Abaddon” and “the first blade” are four he’s been dying to hear.

He writes down the address, hangs up. 

“Time to go,” Dean says, pushing up out of his chair. He’s almost out the door before Sam grabs him by the arm. 

“Where are you going? Was that Crowley? Dean --”

Dean jerks out of Sam’s grip, wheels around. “Crowley’s got a bead on Abaddon, and he told me where to find the blade. So unless you want me to leave your ass here --”

“Hey, I just asked, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” 

He texts Cas on the way to the Impala.

_Got a line on Abaddon. Got to go._

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He just drives.

* * *

Dean knows the best way to get the blade back into his hands is to let Sam dig it out of the body. Not that he’s exactly itching to stick his hand into a very ripe corpse, but he can literally feel the presence of the prize in this sick-ass box of Cracker Jack, and he wants it. 

So of course Sam keeps it. Cleans it up and wraps it up and keeps it all the way to Cleveland. 

It’s all Dean can do not to pull the car over and take it from him. Which is off-limits. No matter how bad this gets, no matter what he’s becoming, that doesn’t touch Sam. And if that means he has to lie or steal or leave Sammy in the middle of freaking bumfuck nowhere, he will do that.

That might not be enough, but it doesn’t have to work a whole hell of a lot longer, right? 

He lies his teeth out when they get to the Humboldt. Sam’s smart enough he’ll figure it out, but it gives Dean the opening he needs to take the blade and split off from his brother, and those are the two most important things after Abaddon.

And Abaddon had better fucking be here, or Crowley’s going to suffer in ways he hasn’t imagined yet.

Dean waits until he’s in the elevator to touch the blade with his bare hands. He’s expecting an uncontrollable rush, and losing his shit in a crowd this close to his goal is not the way this needs to go down. 

What he gets is so much better.

He gets _power_. He gets _certitude_. He feels... _whole_.

Never in his life has he felt this whole. 

Like, all the shit and pain and loss is still there, but he can focus now. And right now, he’s damn focused on whatever trap Crowley’s warning him about. Everything is sharp. He can hear his own breathing, his own heartbeat. He can smell...blood?

He wants blood. He follows the stink. 

Dean’s first instinct is to gank Crowley while he’s down, but that’s a trap. Abaddon’s smart and brutal. Crowley’s bait, and she’ll jump on them the minute he goes in for that kill. She’s waiting here. Somewhere, and--

The grunt he expected, and he guts that demon with hardly a thought. The Darth Vader shit Abaddon pulls? Not so much. 

He might be whole, but he still feels pain. Jagged glass digs at him through his layers. He feels like he’s being crushed.

 _This is that vamp all over again_ , he thinks miserably, not realizing for a second that _yeah, this is that vamp all over again_. All he has to do is call up that tension and see what happens.

It isn’t easy. It burns. Everything burns. His blood is screaming in his ears when he pulls free from the wall. There is no other sound. No other vision. No other sensation but the blade, his target, and this kill. 

The blade is singing in him, and it’s all about her blood.

The burning tension in him turns to exultation when fear crosses her face. He remembers the vamp, seeing the realization in its eyes that the fight is over, and yeah, that’s her. That’s it. Just a little further, and -- 

She slams him back and the blade falls. 

Fucking falls. Out of his hand. The blade _isn’t in his hand anymore_. 

She’s going to crush the life out of him. He’s going to die. That’s it. Everything he’s done, taking on the Mark, for nothing. 

_Look at me, bitch._

Except he still feels it. Under the fear, wholeness. Not peace in the face of death. Completion. 

_Get in my hand, you son of a bitch. You’re a part of me now. We’re not going down like this._

The blade twitches. Shakes. Jumps to his grip. And they dance.

Nothing fancy. Just steps across the floor until the jaw digs into Abaddon, tearing flesh and gut and offal in a flash of eye-searing light. 

Dean doesn’t blink. He wants to see. Wants Abaddon to see him watch her die. Wants to tear her apart. He never wants to stop this. Never wants to stop the kill, even when she falls in a heap of meat he doesn’t want to stop. Can’t stop. Can’t -- 

He doesn’t even hear Sam’s voice over his own blood at first. When he does, he snaps back to himself. Sees himself. Sees Sam, seeing this, and no.

 _No. No, Sammy, no. Don’t see this, Sammy. No._

He drops the blade. There’s blood, but not as much as a living body should have. And Abaddon --

“Dean.”

Sam’s hands are gentle as he eases Dean up and away from what’s left of Abaddon’s body.

“You’re okay, Dean. It’s okay. You’re done.” 

Sam gets him to the bathroom somehow, leaves him alone with the sink to wash up. Everything feels muffled. Everything feels different now. 

Jesus, he needs to get a grip. He just killed a Knight of Hell. 

No, he just killed the _Queen_ of Hell.

Sam’s squaring things away with Crowley when he comes out, clean as he’s going to get without a trip to the laundromat. And then there’s the thing with the kid -- and seriously, what the hell is Crowley’s kid doing here? -- and before he gets a chance to change his mind about ganking the son of a bitch, Crowley is gone. 

Which is kind of shitty, given that without Gavin, or whatever the hell his name is, Sam’s got plenty of time and attention to spend on Dean.

And yeah, maybe he should feel bad about this. Secrets and all, you know? But he doesn’t. Because he was right. And even if he tries to explain it to Sam -- and he does, the best way he can, even if some of it’s hindsight and some of it can’t go into words -- his brother’s never going to hear him. Sammy can’t know. He wasn’t raised a soldier the same way. He’s not living with the Mark. 

He doesn’t know, the way Dean knows with cold certainty, that Sam would have died in that hotel room tonight if he hadn’t been down in the basement instead. Whether it was him or Abaddon who did it? Well, Dean’s going to call that an open question. 

And Dean’s keeping that tidbit to himself because Sammy’s holding the blade, still. Keeping it from him.

So Dean’s going to let him be pissed. He’s going to roll his eyes at Sam’s insistence that the blade is changing him -- as if a fucking magic _jawbone_ is the problem here -- and just let it ride.

“Look,” Sam says. “I’m thinking. Until we know for sure that we’re gonna kill off Crowley, why don’t we store the blade somewhere distant? Lock it up somewhere safe? Okay?”

“No.”

So much for letting it ride. 

* * *

The drive from Cleveland to Lebanon is about a fifteen hour haul, and Dean’s got no doubt he can do it, but they get a room in Gary because Sam’s coming apart. 

“You should get some rest,” Sam tells him, with all the authority of a man already mostly unconscious.

Dean doesn’t even bother answering. He just watches his brother sleep, counts the seconds between the breaths until he’s sure that Sam’s not going to twitch awake at any noise. 

It’s maybe an hour before Dean’s really sure.

He stands up, gets the blade out of Sam’s duffel. He’s not afraid of any rush, now. He just needs to be close to the blade. Wants the certitude. Wants the strength of it.

Sam sleeps, breathing. In and out. Slow and harmless. Innocent. Still. Dean can feel the pull between the blade and his brother’s beating heart. He can imagine standing, silent, stalking to the edge of the mattress, and stopping that heart for good.

It would be intoxicating if it wasn’t Sammy. 

Dean swallows, shakes his head, wraps the blade and hides it in his brother’s bag again. 

* * * 

The rest of the drive is tense, all ten hours. They start late, Sam still exhausted and hungry. 

Dean eats, but he can’t help feeling like he’s going through the motions. Like, the burger is good, but it’s not what he really needs.

He tries to pin it on the post-hunt come-down, like he’s just going to be numb for a couple of days because Abaddon’s off the board, but he knows damn well there’s more to it than that. 

Sam’s not wrong. This thing with the Mark, with the blade? It’s changing him, and it’s going to end bad. He’s just got to do everything he can in the meantime and hope its enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Twist of Cain" by Danzig.
> 
> Thanks as always to 51stCenturyFox who has yet to leave me shackled to a chair in the basement even though I'd probably let her if she asked.


	16. Our Shadows Taller Than Our Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel's army falls, Dean's descent accelerates, and comfort is taken in Iowa City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Dean behaving violently in troubling ways. Not inconsistent with what he does in 9x22 per se, but still not the kind of thing we like to see from him.

Sam crashes out when they hit the bunker.

Dean...doesn’t. He hasn’t slept in days. He figures it’s the Mark, and the kill, and maybe he’s just having some kind of weird manic episode. Intense post-kill comedown. 

He doesn’t even bother with the whiskey. He just slumps back in a library chair and stares at the walls. 

He’d call Cas -- wants to call Cas -- but he’s got no idea what to say to him. He’s trying to find that part of him that lost its shit and went running into the woods and called Cas out of desperation all those weeks ago, but it’s just one big, blank emotional slate. 

It terrifies him, not to have that fear anymore. It was miserable, but this is a void, and he’s scared to scratch the surface of that to see if there’s anything underneath.

The Mark is changing him. He keeps saying it’s the thing he had to do, and that he’s going to see this thing through and damn the consequences, but the fact is he’s terrified. It’s screwing with him so hard he can’t put it into words, even to Cas, who listens to him, and talks him down, and fucks him over the phone because they’re hundreds of miles apart. 

He really ought to call Cas, but what Dean really wants is just to see Cas, to lay against him, to let and to let him lie about how everything is going to be okay even though Dean damn well knows it isn’t. 

It’s gonna have to be, though. At least until he can take Metatron down. After that, he’s resigned to whatever happens. Because something will. There’s not going to be anything left of him after that.

And that’s why he _should call Cas_. Because the clock is ticking. Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em and all that.

He picks up his phone.

“Dean.” Cas answers fast and sounds terrible. Dean tenses up instinctively. “How soon can you get to Dixon, Missouri?”

“Dixon?” He frowns. “Uh, where is that exactly?” 

“It’s on I-44, near…” Castiel pauses, and Dean hears a rustle of maps. “Ft. Leonard Wood.” 

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose. That’s getting close to Southwest Missouri. “I’d have to check a map, but I’m guessing six hours, ten on the outside. What’s going on?”

“I can’t talk about it over the phone. Just...please hurry.”

He stands up, suddenly purposeful. It’s a relief to have an objective. “You got it, Cas.” 

Dean cues up the first badass guitar lick he can find on his phone and tromps down into the dormitories to wake Sammy up with extreme prejudice. Cas needs him, and if things are this urgent maybe he’ll have a chance to get his hands dirty this time. 

 

* * *

Predictably, Sam is a douche about the blade. 

That doesn’t stop Dean from packing it along; it just means he’s got to do it when Sam isn’t looking. It fits in his jacket, and even if it leaves a bulge (it doesn’t really) it’s not like there aren’t a hundred other weapons in their arsenal Sam’ll think of first if he notices it.

It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world. Really, he should want to complain more, given that having a jawbone digging into his ribs for eight hours in the Impala should be distracting and annoying. Instead...well, it’s not comforting or soothing, that’s for damn sure. 

But he feels keen. Honed. Locked and loaded. 

Sam dozes most of the way to Dixon in spite of the coffee, and Dean doesn’t wake him. Somebody around here needs to keep acting like a normal human being. Might as well be Sam.

The scene at Colonel Scoops is ugly, no two ways about it. Like, ugly enough that he pretty much forgets the Spears-and-Aguilera thing when the extent of the damage becomes apparent. 

For the first time in a long while, Dean remembers that he’s supposed to be afraid of angels. The fact that Metatron’s the reason he’s having that feeling makes the blood rush in his ears, and his hands itch for a weapon and something to hit.

Instead, they pack up and hit the road for Cas’ base.

Cas’ base. Now there are two words that aren’t getting any easier to process. 

Maybe he’s just being paranoid, but Dean still doesn’t like the idea of that many angels in one place united behind...well, anyone. Especially Cas. They act like there’s a common cause, but that reminds Dean uncomfortably of the Apocalypse, and Cas doesn’t exactly have an awesome track record when it comes to being in charge. 

it’s the kind of thing that could put Cas’ name on his hit list. And it will if this gets out of hand.

“You okay, Dean?” Sam asks, knocking him back into the moment.

“Yeah, m’fine. Why?”

“Nothing. You just seem kind of tense is all. You sure you don’t want me to drive? You’ve been up for…” Sam frowns. “How long have you been up?”

“Couple of days,” Dean says like it’s nothing. And maybe in his twenties a couple of days was nothing, but these days it shouldn’t be, and he’s been up way longer than that. “Don’t worry about it. I downed a Red Bull on our way out of St. Robert.”

“When?”

“Gas station,” he lies. You were taking a leak. What are you, my babysitter?” 

Sam frowns and furrows his brow, but he lets it drop. 

* * *

It figures that angels don’t know how to investigate things worth a damn. And, you know, he’s getting ready to enjoy pointing that out when the kid in red -- Benjamin? -- brings up video of what looks a hell of a lot like an angelic suicide bomber, blowing himself up for Castiel.

_Son of a bitch._

It takes every ounce of will he has not to launch himself on Cas then and there and beat him down, because now? Now he’s on the fucking list. 

He should never, ever have been on the list, and Dean takes his anger out with words. He calls Castiel’s whole operation a cult. He brings up the way Cas lost his mind and tried to be God. And he means it because maybe...maybe he wants to believe that Cas isn’t just another angel. That Cas is better than this. That he and Sam haven’t been used and lied to and betrayed _again_.

Especially now with...well, whatever it is he and Cas are doing now. 

It’s Sam who gets him under control -- and that’s great, but that’ll slip sooner or later -- and Dean finagles a way to get both of them out of his hair. Fucking building full of angels or not, he’s glad to be rid of both of them for a while so he can just think without one or both of them getting in his grill, or questioning him, or stopping him.

Colorado and back? That’s a day on its own. Probably a couple. 

Dean smiles. He’s got work to do.

* * * 

Interrogation and investigation is a lot of face-time. Ordinarily, with human beings, Dean’s able to play manipulator, to tease out information with hints of sex or disappointment or friendship.

Angels? They’re like a bunch of overly-literal elementary school kids with superiority complexes. It’s exhausting.

To be fair, some of them aren’t complete douchewheels. Like, there’s this one, Ephra, who’s not real savvy, but Dean can tell he’s trying to be helpful. Hannah’s growing on him a little bit, even though he guesses she’s humoring him because of Cas. 

Most of the angels fall more or less into the middle of the asshole scale -- visibly resenting the fact that a human being is questioning them, but putting up with it because Castiel has authority here -- and while it chafes, at least they cooperate.

And then there’s this Falstaff bitch.

Dean doesn’t mean to lose it. It all happens too fast: the table flies and he’s on her, blade to her throat, sucking in the smell of her fear. 

It’s a dangerous loss of control, and even if he gets the information he wants out of her, Dean’s not stupid. Parts of him are coming loose way too fast. This isn’t him. It isn’t. It can’t be. 

Which means he needs to work faster. Push harder. So he’s out the door chasing after Tessa before fucking Falstaff can rat on him.

He tracks her. Stalks her like prey. And man, this is so easy. So natural. He’s got Tessa in cuffs before she realizes what’s happening. He barely cares that she fights him on the way to the car. Between the Mark and those handy-dandy Men of Letters cuffs, she’s his. 

Dean waits until they’re back in the Impala before he pulls out his pocket knife. He snaps it open and looks at the blade, all sharp and shiny steel. 

“You know, Tessa, I’ve got some rules about the kinds of things that go on here in my car. No open drinks, no messy food. No leaving trash in the floorboards. This car is my baby. She’s my home. You came for my soul, way back when, though, so you already know that, am I right?”

Her eyes are on him, wide. “Dean, what are you doing?”

“I said, _AM I RIGHT?_ ”

She flinches and nods. Dean’s grin is more like baring teeth than a smile.

“So here’s the thing. Drawing blood? That’s usually on the list. Me and Sam, we get banged up enough out there, and I don’t like cleaning the seats any more than I’ve got to because it’s a pain. But if I have to choose between a little bit of knife play and a walking bomb in my car...well, let’s just say I’d rather reach for the Armor All.”

Dean shifts in the seat and turns to kneel on it. He grabs Tessa by the arm and drags her close. 

“Now. This can be real simple. You can hold still and let me defuse you, or we can have ourselves a fight. Either way, I’m gonna draw a little blood now.” 

He tugs at her shirt to reveal the runes, but Tessa tries to pull away. He backhands her, fast and hard, and grabs her by the hair to keep her down, then digs the blade into her skin, defacing the symbols carved there. 

The white skin of her throat is right there in his peripheral vision, and he wonders what it would look like with a red gash that runs from ear to ear.

Shocked, Dean pushes Tessa away hard. He feels high. He feels sick. With practiced hands he wipes the blood away from the knife on a shop rag and shoves it back in his pocket. 

_Too far_ , he tells himself, but all the thoughts he’s having about taking things further? It’s not like his Gerber’s an angel blade, after all. He could do it. He could do all kinds of crazy shit and Tessa would just keep on ticking. 

His hands practically itch at that idea, and Dean slams the lid down on that feeling as hard as he can, because he’s got to maintain. He can’t lose himself yet. Soon, but not yet.

Dean swallows, starts the car. “Let’s go talk this out like grownups,” he says, and pulls back out onto the road.

* * * 

The angels don’t trust him. 

It’s fucking irritating. It’s also probably the smartest goddamn thing an angel on earth has ever done. Trouble is, they're also dumb about it. They take away his angel blade without even thinking to pat him down for other weapons like there’s nothing he could possibly have that would be a real threat.

Arrogant, stupid angels. 

Hannah comes in to supervise the interrogation. He doesn’t exactly welcome it, but some small part of him hopes she’ll help keep him from slipping again because Tessa’s words to Sam -- _your brother’s a psycho!_ \-- won’t stop ringing in his ears. 

He shouldn’t have kept his hopes up. 

Tessa barely taunts her before Hannah forgets all about Peace and Order and Dean has to drag her out. And this? _This_ is who he is. Who he's supposed to be. Put Dean Winchester in a room with someone who needs taking care of, and that’s what he's made for. Helping people. Saving them. 

So he can do this. Tessa. He can help Tessa. Whatever’s going on here, this ain’t her, and he's going to get to the bottom of it.

Dean goes back in. And god damn, he tries. He tries so hard to talk her through it, to dig in the way he can with people and coax it out. To empathize with the pain she must be in with heaven locked down. 

She plays him like a goddamn fiddle, and he doesn’t even realize it until she pulls herself onto the blade, hilts it in her own guts, and burns out.

Heartbreak shouldn’t get him high, but it sings anyway.

He barely feels the fists of the angels that pile on him and rip the blade away from him. He struggles on autopilot, kicking and grabbing and throwing punches until one of them takes a lucky shot and cracks his head against the chair and everything goes black.

* * *

This time, the angels check him over.

They have learned their lesson this time, and they are very thorough. 

With the exception of a handful of bathroom breaks, Dean spends the rest of his time chained to a chair, tape over his mouth, on Hannah’s orders. 

Fucking hypocritical bitch.

He hates this. He hates being inert. He hates having to sit with himself like this with nothing to distract him or numb his anger, fear, and shame. 

With no way to bury the high. 

* * *

Things move pretty fast when Sam and Cas get back. There’s the inevitable shit-show when Sam takes him to task for bringing the blade, and Cas starts to get involved, and then Metatron freaking Skypes in to bring the whole house crashing down around them. 

No, around Cas. Because in minutes he goes from being the Commander to the guy whose every motive is suspect. And then Hannah hands Cas an angel blade.

This is the price of Peace and Order. 

He waits for Cas to lunge, braces himself for a blow that never lands. Stands stunned, as the angels filter out. Waits until it’s just the three of them in an empty power station. 

“Sammy, can you, uh... Can you wait in the car? I need to talk to Cas alone.”

Sam nods, and Dean waits until he hears the bang of the old steel door slamming shut.

Dean buries his face in his hands, takes a deep breath, then runs his hands through his hair. He looks at the door. He’s so full of everything right now, anger for himself and for Cas, shame, fear about what he’s becoming. 

He looks at Cas, still standing there with the blade in his hand. 

He imagines reaching out to Cas. He could take the hand with the blade in it and press the tip of it against his chest, right over his heart. He could turn his hands so that he can guide the blade, jam it in if Cas doesn’t. 

Not now, obviously. Not with Metatron out there, more powerful now for having almost all of the angels behind him. But after. Maybe Cas will do this for him after. One last lift from perdition for old times’ sake.

The angel blade clatters to the floor and Cas sinks to his knees, eyes downcast.

Dean kneels beside him, holds him close, cards his fingers in Castiel’s hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Cas, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.” 

“They never believed.”

Cas’ words take him by surprise. He doesn’t break contact, but pulls back enough to lean down and peer at Cas’ face. “What do you mean?”

“The mission,” Cas says, and raises his eyes heavenward. “Stopping Metatron. If they’d believed, they’d have cast me out and kept working. I was a fool. I should have known better, but I just, I just had so much faith in them. That my people…” 

Cas grits his teeth, bites back tears.

“This isn’t your fault,” Dean says, intending to help but realizing too late that those words are the wrong ones because Cas pushes out of his arms and rises to his feet. 

“Isn’t it, Dean?” Castiel’s anger -- and in this moment, Dean is sure that he’s _Castiel_ and not _Cas_ \-- is palpable. “I helped you find Metatron. I believed him about the spell. I raised an army to prove him wrong. Instead I have, literally, at every turn done nothing but give him exactly what he wants and prove him right. Heaven is closed _because of me_. Angels have been killing each other _because of me_. Oren? Tessa? Constantine? _They did what they did because of me_.”

Castiel shoves a table over with more violence than Dean has ever seen him exhibit, sends it smashing against a desk, papers flying, glass breaking. It should be shocking, but Dean knows by the look in Castiel’s eyes that this gesture is disappointingly small. 

Too human. He should be able to blow the wiring out of this place. Instead he’s flipping tables.

Cas howls with rage, shoves at a desk. It topples over but only just; it’s so large he has trouble budging it.

Sam texts him.

_Please tell me you’re not killing each other in there._

Dean texts back. 

_Cas needs to blow off some steam. Go gas up the car._

Dean lets him rage. He bears witness while Cas tears down everything he’s been working toward. 

When Cas finally slumps down, exhausted and sobbing, Dean closes the distance behind them and rests a hand on his shoulder. Cas leans into the touch, so Dean joins him on the floor again and lets Cas dig his fingers into Dean’s clothes. 

Cas buries his face in Dean’s shirts and weeps. Dean just rests his face against Cas’ hair and strokes the back of his neck with his fingers. 

It’s not okay, and Dean doesn’t like to tell him it is. It’s probably not going to get better, so Dean doesn’t say that either. 

“I’m here, Cas.” 

Cas kisses him. It’s not desperate, but it’s not soft either. Dean rests his hand on Cas’ cheek and kisses back. 

“Let’s drive til morning. Hit a hotel on the way back,” he murmurs against Cas’ lips. 

“What about Sam?”

“What about him?” Dean says with a smirk. “I’ll tell him you shouldn’t be alone. It’s the truth.”

He helps Cas gather a few things into a duffel, shoulders it himself, and leads him to the Impala.

* * *

They get rooms in Iowa City. Dean tells Sam he’s going to look after Cas, and Sam doesn’t even blink an eye at it. He’s more concerned about the location of the blade, which is currently wrapped and resting on the table next to Sam’s laptop. 

It chafes, but he knows there’s no good reason to bring it along. Sam can keep it tonight. if he needs it, it’s not like Sam can stop him getting it.

Dean drops his duffel just inside the door of Cas’ room and swallows. They’ve never really done this. Make intentional time. It’s always something else that brings them together -- one of Dean’s breakdowns, usually -- and while the loss of Cas’ army is how they got here, this isn’t sudden desperation or a phone call that veers into sex. 

This is...premeditated? Is that even the right word for what’s about to happen? 

“Uh. So. Hi.” 

Cas looks up. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, still wearing his coat. He gives Dean a small, lopsided smile. “Hello.”

Dean shucks off his jacket and his overshirt and drapes them over the back of the desk chair. He pauses, then sits down next to Cas, close enough that their knees and shoulders touch. 

It’s been a long time since Dean felt awkward like this with someone in a hotel room. Then again, it’s been a long time since he’s been emotionally intimate like this with anyone. Add in the way Tessa’s death is still singing in his blood, and the way everything is falling apart around them, and maybe there’s no way they wouldn’t end up here like a couple of teenagers, touching but not touching. 

He inhales through his nose, wrinkles it. “Oh man. I need a shower. I didn’t even think about that.” 

“I don’t mind,” Cas says. “I like the way you smell.” 

“I think you’ll like how I look in the shower even more. Come on.” He tugs at Cas’ wrist and pulls him up onto his feet.

Dean stops at the bathroom door. There’s a little closet nook, with a couple of hangers. He hooks his thumbs under the edge of Cas’ coat and eases it off of his shoulders, then hangs it up, then does the same with the jacket of Castiel’s black suit. He steps closer into Cas’ space and kisses him gently as his fingers go to Cas’ shirt buttons. 

He strips Cas slowly, taking care to put every garment away except for Cas’ socks and boxers, which he drops on top of the dinky hotel safe. Dean leaves his own jeans and his t-shirt wadded up on the closet rack. When he looks back, Cas is standing there looking unsure, arms crossed over his chest, eyes more or less focused on the carpet. 

“Hey,” Dean says, and rests his hand on Cas’ cheek. “You okay?” 

“This is...different,” Cas manages, his eyes flicking up to meet Dean’s gaze. “I’m not sure how to do this.”

“Yeah, they don’t really cover this bit in Casa Erotica,” Dean murmurs against Cas’ lips, then kisses him lightly. “Come on. I’ll teach you.”

The water pressure isn’t great, but Dean’s worked with worse. At least the temperature’s okay. He leads Cas in, closes the curtain, and smiles.

“Relax, Cas. We’re just going to get me clean, okay? Shower sex? That’s a whole different lesson.” 

Cas nods. 

Dean manages to adjust the spray so that it hits both of them, more or less. He starts with Cas, running his hands over bare skin, slicking it with water. Cas only hesitates for a moment before he follows suit. They have to press close, and soon they’re pressed front-to-front, kissing and clinging to one another, getting hard against one another’s thighs. Cas’ mouth strays from Dean’s lips, trails across his jaw to his neck and Dean barely has the willpower to draw back and hand Cas the soap. 

“Not yet. Shower first.”

Cas’ eyes are already wide and dark with arousal, and he bites his bottom lip. Dean feels his dick jump just on that basis alone, but then Cas starts washing him with just his hands and the soap and all he wants to do is relax into that touch, and the way Cas’ strong fingers dig into the tension in his shoulders and his thighs. 

“You’re amazing,” he murmurs, and takes the soap when Cas tries to put it on the shelf. He slicks his hands and reciprocates, basking in the surprised sounds Cas makes when Dean undoes a knotted muscle. It occurs to him that Cas has probably never been touched like this. That he’s here first. It’s such a weird thought when he puts it together with what Cas actually _is_ , but he likes it, too. 

They rinse the soap from one another with caresses. By the time he turns the taps off all he wants to do is this, forever and ever, static in his hand and ache of the Mark’s tension in his bones be damned. They only just manage to towel off and fumble their way to the bed together. 

It’s not like they’re groping and rutting. There’s a sweetness and care in their touches tonight that tells Dean that they’ve passed the hookup stage into something different and deeper. It’s going to hurt, Dean knows, because they’ve both got expiration dates now -- Cas and his failing grace, him and the Mark -- but that can matter later because right now their mouths are pressed together, and they’re kneeling together on the mattress, and his hands are on the small of Cas’ back. 

“What do you want to try?” Dean whispers, breaking the kiss to nuzzle at Cas’ jaw. 

“I want…” Cas hesitates, and Dean can’t tell if it’s embarrassment or if he’s trying to figure out what to ask for. “Can you be in me? And hold me? Is that okay?” 

Dean nods against Cas’ neck. “I need to get my bag.”

He eases off the bed and leans over for his duffel. The condoms and lube are wrapped up in one of his shirts at the bottom of the bag, so he kind of has to dig. When he looks up, Cas is watching him. He should feel kind of awkward, but he doesn’t. He...well, he’s getting used to the idea he might like it when Cas notices him.

Cas lets Dean move him onto his side and for a minute they just lay there with Dean stroking Cas’ side and hip, pressing kisses into Cas shoulder. Then he pops the cap on the lube and squeezes out a generous dollop onto his first two fingers. He warms it, rubbing it between his fingertips and thumb, spreading it down his fingers a little before he reaches down and starts to ease Cas open. 

It’s a slow tease at first, just stroking instead of pushing. It must feel good to Cas because he hums his pleasure at first, then starts rocking his hips in complement to the motions of Dean’s slick fingers. By the time Dean slips the first finger inside he’s not quite sure which one of them makes it happen. 

“Oh Dean,” he sighs. “Dean, this is…this is so good.”

“Yeah?” Dean smiles, pushes in deeper. “Want more?”

Cas moans, pushes back onto Dean’s hand. 

“Is that a yes?” He nips lightly at Cas’ shoulder and doesn’t want for an answer before he slides the second finger in. Cas shudders and groans. “Oh yeah. That is definitely a yes.” 

Cas gasps. His hips are in full motion now, fucking back against the motion of Dean’s fingers. “Yes. Yes, yes. So good. Want you.”

It’s overwhelming. Cas isn’t even human. He’s some kind of massive, spiritual being in the body of a man who on a good day should be able to vaporize Dean and everything he loves. And here he is, arching and sobbing to get fucked. Dean is transfixed by how beautiful that is and intoxicated by the power of it. 

_I can overpower a vampire. I ganked the Queen of Hell. I make angels beg._

He has never felt so strong.

Cas lets out a whimper of complaint when Dean draws his fingers out. He rolls the condom on as fast as he can -- he’s honestly not sure if he needs one, but good habits and easy clean-up are both good things -- lubes up, and settles in behind Cas. 

“You ready?” 

Cas nods. Dean presses up and lets out a low moan as Cas pushes back against him, taking him all the way in with one slow slide. 

And oh, Cas is so fucking hot and tight, he can barely stand it. He rests his forehead against the back of Cas’s shoulder and puts an arm around his waist. Cas laces their fingers together, and they move, slow at first and building to a steady rhythm. 

They fit. They fit so perfectly. Cas’ skin feels so good against his. Their fingers together, their bodies moving in tandem, the sounds Cas makes when Dean surprises him with a harder thrust, the way Cas’ skin tastes when it’s slick with Dean’s sweat? So good. Of all the things he never knew he wanted, this is the thing he’s glad he found. 

Cas pulls their hands down and onto his cock, and they stroke it together. Dean can feel Cas getting closer in the way his breath is losing its rhythm, the speed of their hands. He hangs on tight when Cas’ orgasm takes him, refusing to slip out even though Cas is squirming and shaking.

Dean pushes Cas face down onto the mattress and pounds his way to the finish line, drinking in the little cries and shudders and endearments that Cas is only half-succeeding at articulating. 

Coming inside is so good. He clutches at Cas’ arm hard enough his nails leave crescent marks on his skin and doesn’t want to stop. He pumps his hips and keeps fucking past the point of orgasm until he literally can’t handle the sensation any longer and he has to slide out and onto his back, panting. 

“Holy fuck,” he says. His dick is throbbing as it softens. He’s almost afraid to try and pull the condom off. He swats Cas’ hand away from it when he reaches down for it and shakes his head. “Too much.” 

Cas nods and snuggles up against him, resting his head on Dean’s chest. 

“So how long have you got?” Dean asks, fingers stroking Cas’ skin. 

“I don’t know. Not...not long. Long enough, I hope.” Cas looks up at him, questioning. “Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“That my grace, that what I am is...broken.”

Dean kisses Cas’ forehead. “Cas, no. No. You did what you had to.”

They don’t sleep, but they do lie together, just resting in shared silence. 

Dean tries not to acknowledge the itch under his skin between soft touches, or the odd curious thought about what it might be like to rip the breath out of Castiel instead of kissing him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to 51stCenturyFox, who also does a very thorough pat-down. 
> 
> Contains material from 9x22. I didn't write those bits. They're not even remotely mine. 
> 
> Title is a line from "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.


	17. A Bloody Minded Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two confrontations, two brothers, and a plan that ends in perfection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have updated the tags to reflect a Significant Thing which occurs in 9x23. That thing happens here, too.

They’re unloading in the bunker garage -- not a whole lot of work given that it’s the three of them and a few duffels -- when Sam tries to walk away from him.

Dean grabs the strap Sam’s bag, yanks him back to facing him. “I’m not asking. Now hand it over.”

Sam frowns and straightens up. “You think you need the blade here? In the _bunker_?”

“Yeah, I do. I’m the only one who can use it, and now that Metatron’s actively gunning for us, I don’t think his goons are going to wait around for you to pass me my damn weapon.”

“So use a gun! Use an angel blade!”

“Yeah, that’ll be real effective if Metatron shows up. In case you didn’t notice, the guy’s practically God.”

“Right,” Sam scoffs, and starts to turn away. “You’re going to take on Metatron.”

The tension doesn’t even need to rise. It’s waiting in his blood. “Sam, give me the blade.”

Sam scoffs. “Or what, you’ll take it from me?”

“Yes.”

Sam stops. Dean feels his lips curl into something that isn’t quite a smile as his brother visibly steels himself. 

“Fine.” Sam shoves the wrapped blade into Dean’s palm. 

“Glad we cleared that up.” Dean unwraps the blade and tucks it into his clothes. His eyes don’t leave Sam’s for an instant. “This ain’t a democracy, Sam. Until we take Metatron down, you do what I say, when I say it.”

“I thought you wanted us to be a team.”

“Yeah, well, this team needed a leader. Now it’s got one.” 

Sam’s eyes flick away, land briefly on Cas, who has stopped on his way to the stairwell to watch them. 

“Fine.” 

They descend the steps in silence. Sam turns sharp for the dormitories, but Castiel grabs his shoulder before he can dart off.

It takes Dean a second to realize why.

Gadreel stands up from his seat in the library, hands raised in submission. “I am not here to fight.”

“Yeah?” Dean says, stepping forward. “Too bad. I was looking forward to kicking your ass.”

“Castiel,” Gadreel says, looking past Dean’s right shoulder. “You were right. About Metatron. Those angels were his agents. Not yours.”

“Agents that _you_ recruited. That Metatron _brainwashed_ ,” Castiel says, his voice a caution laced with anger. 

Gadreel nods. “I...erred. Now I want to help correct that error.”

Dean can think of a couple of very expedient ways to correct that error. He takes another step forward. “And why should we believe you? You tricked us before. You lied to me. You used Sam. You killed Kevin.”

“I can give you Metatron. Please. You don’t have to trust me. Just give me a chance.”

Dean extends a hand. Gadreel, ever the angel, takes it without understanding. He doesn’t even see the blade coming. 

It’s an unlucky miss; a gash and not a kill shot, and Dean lunges in to finish the job, but Cas and Sam are on him, dragging him back, pushing him away, and Sam is screaming at him to let go of the blade. 

Dean rages in their grasp. Gadreel deserves to die. He stopped before, because he didn’t want to give the son of a bitch the satisfaction, but now? After everything? He wants to take this fucker down to sinew. 

* * *

The dungeon is not a good place to be. He’s pent up. He’s pacing. Everything hurts and everything feels wrong. Everything is grinding against itself. He feels sick. Feverish. His guts feel like they’re full of razors.

The pain is almost worse than the anger at being shut away down here. The anger at least makes sense. 

Eventually, Dean breaks down and does what he’s always done when the shit goes down. He takes stock. They’ve locked him down here, but they haven’t put him in restraints. That means he’s got access to a whole lot of interesting things. 

Books. Chalk. 

Dean knows the Men of Letters did experiments down here on demons, but the tools aren’t so different from what he needs to do a summoning. Yeah, he’s got to improvise a little bit and make some substitutions, but his attempt still pulls Crowley up out of the pit. 

It takes almost zero time for Dean to wish that maybe it hadn’t. 

Crowley fills him in on what’s happening to his body -- that the Mark will burn him out anyway, but in the meantime he’s got to kill or die -- and his first reflex is to panic and find a way out. 

Crowley, Cain, none of them told him what this would cost. 

The price doesn’t matter. Can’t matter. He’s got to do his job, and that means killing Metatron. Anything else he’s got to deal with later.

“Where’s Moose?” Crowley asks when they reappear in the library. 

“The hell are you asking me for?” Dean looks around. Almost immediately his eyes fix on the box and he makes a beeline for it. “Got it. Let’s get out of here.”

Crowley kneels down, touches the bloody mess on the ground in the war room. “Angel?” He raises his eyebrows, sniffs at it, then cleans his fingers with a handkerchief. “Dean. Just what did you get up to while I was away?”

Dean grits his teeth and ignores him.

* * *

Ignoring Crowley turns out to be a lot easier said than done. The son of a bitch keeps yammering on about this and that, taking pot shots at him for trying to do his damn job, badgering him into ordering food he doesn’t want. 

Like, actually guilting him into the food. Like, seriously. What the hell.

Though, speaking of, Dean guesses he’s got room to be smug. Judging by how cagey Crowley is about the whole gig, being King apparently ain’t what it used to be.

He doesn’t get to stay smug, though, because two of Crowley’s goons show up with an iPhone and video of Metatron playing Jesus out in Indiana. 

Dean drops a twenty on the table and they hit the road.

“You could have at least asked for a box,” Crowley says as they pull onto the highway. 

“You want that burger so bad, why don’t you go back for it?”

Crowley snickers. “Now, now, Dean. I’d just think, with your background, you’d hate seeing food go to waste is all.”

Dean narrows his eyes, doesn’t rise to the bait.

“Anyway, even if you’re not hungry now--” 

“Yeah, fine. Whatever.” Dean turns on the tape deck and cranks the volume. 

If Crowley has an opinion about Black Sabbath he keeps it to himself.

* * *

Sam is waiting for them in Muncie, and damn if they don’t have it out on some nice not-dead woman’s stoop. 

Well, mostly it’s Sam unloading on him, and from where Dean’s standing that’s a pretty ballsy move considering Sam’s looking to bring him back over to Team Brotherhood. Still, Sam’s got a whole hell of a lot more in the way of information than Crowley does if he figures in Cas and Gadreel. 

“I’m gonna take my shot, for better or worse.” 

“I know.”

_No, Sammy. You really don’t._

“No matter the consequences.”

“I know. But if this is it, we’re gonna do it together.”

Well, hell. This is awkward.

Dean wants to believe. He does. But even if he doesn’t, Sam and Cas are already trying to do the job as if he’s on board with it. He can’t just leave them hanging with this much on the line. 

And even if Sam doesn’t mean it, at least there’s a better than fifty percent chance of him at least pretending to have Dean’s back than Crowley ever could.

“You want to know what he whispered to her, right? In the video?” Sam says, and Dean knows that whatever misgivings he might have, this is Sam’s trump card. “His next stop.”

* * *

They ditch Crowley in Muncie and Sam fills him in on the plan: Cas and Gadreel sneak into Heaven and depower Metatron so that Dean can take him out with Sam on support.

It’s a decent enough plan, especially given the built-in failsafe. If Metatron’s just a garden-variety angel, even Sam can take him out in a pinch. So that’s something. 

Still, he can’t stop thinking about the holes in it. Metatron’s got a lot of juice, and if Cas and Gadreel fail, that’s not a fight he’s necessarily ready for. As amped-up as the blade makes him feel when he’s got a good bloodlust on, Dean’s still not sure it’ll actually give him the power to kill...well, God.

And then there’s Crowley. As glad as Dean is to be rid of him, the fact that they had to ditch him -- the way Crowley had touted his “mad skills” before basically going off in a huff -- sits a little funny.

“Did you get a weird vibe off of Crowley back there?”

Sam frowns and looks up from the atlas. “Uh, yeah. It’s Crowley.”

“So he didn’t seem a little, I don’t know. Off?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?” Sam shrugs. “You think he might be back on the blood thing?”

“Said he’s off of it. Of course, if I were him, I’d say the same thing. He also said Hell’s ‘complicated.’ Why’s he wasting time topside?” 

“You summoned him, Dean.”

“Well yeah, but he’s not usually so damn eager to join the team. That back there? He wanted in.”

“Could be he just wants Metatron out of the picture.” Sam goes back to the atlas.

Dean shakes his head. “Crowley never just wants something. Dude’s always got some kind of tangled business going down.”

“Yeah, maybe. Anyway, you didn’t give him what he wanted. So that’s something.”

“Yeah. I guess.” 

* * *

Simple problems have simple solutions. 

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t hate himself for the things he has to do to solve them. 

Going in together like brothers? He gets it. He does. He’d love for it to be that easy. But he’s not bringing Sammy along for a fight that’s probably going to kill him, body and soul. 

Someone has to live. That someone is going to be his baby brother. This isn’t Sam’s fight. Sam thinks it is, but everything that happened to him is just collateral damage. 

Dean lays his brother out with one clean sucker punch, then turns toward the encampment. 

He sees the glow of the fires first. Isn’t really surprised that he’s recognized. Shouldn’t be surprised by the bloodstains on asphalt. 

Metatron’s just that kind of God.

No, he’s surprised by the thumping in his chest. With Abaddon, this was certitude and craving. This?

He’s scared.

If he wasn’t scared, he wouldn’t stall. He’d take his shot instead of waiting -- praying -- that Cas and Gadreel figure out how to power Metatron down instead of listening to the guy go on and on about cynicism and how much God stinks at being God. 

Like, seriously, as if that’s news to anybody. 

He can’t wait forever. He brings out the blade, not sure if it’s the right move or a miscalculation, but it feels good to say his piece and lay Cas’ pain and Kevin’s death at Metatron’s feet. 

And hey, Metatron believes his own hype. Dean guesses that an angel playing god wouldn’t take him seriously even if he had a actual nuke strapped to his chest. 

It rises in him. The strength. He can hold it as long as he has to, taut like a bowstring until Metatron powers down. Until --

“Well here’s a newsflash: Humpty and Dumpty are starring in their own version of “Locked Up Abroad: Heaven Edition” right now.”

Dean feints with the blade and pops Metatron in that smug fucking mouth of his. The blow knocks the son of a bitch back a good yard. 

Good enough. 

He opens up and lets the bloodlust flow.

* * *

It’s a long fight. 

Not in the sense that it takes a long time. It doesn’t. Even when someone just throws punches for the satisfaction -- and Metatron’s definitely doing that now -- these things don’t last for hours. They last for minutes. 

No, fights like this are long because all he can do at this point is wait things out and hope for an opening. Dean takes the shots he can, blocks when he’s lucky, but mostly he can’t do a whole hell of a lot but get his ass kicked. 

It’s brutal, because Metatron’s not even fighting to take him down anymore. He’s just hitting Dean, over and over, because he can. Dean can’t decide if the guy is proving a point or gloating or just enjoying it. Honestly, he’s kind of going in and out right now, trying to stave off the big K.O.

Dean spots the blade. Calls it to his hand. Readies it because he’s finally got his opening. He can end this. Will end this. He just has to -- 

Metatron’s blade sinks into Dean’s chest, just below the solar plexus. It’s an ugly wound, a slow kill, and Metatron twists the knife to make sure Dean absolutely feels now nasty the bleeding and hemorrhaging is going to be. 

_So this is what losing the world feels like._

He thinks he sees Sam, and that’s weird, because Sam’s not an angel, and Heaven’s closed anyway. Except it has to be Sam, because everything is quaking around them and Sam’s pulling a blade on Metatron, and Metatron -- 

_Shit. Sammy, you idiot, get out._

\-- Metatron’s gone.

He’s still trying to tell Sam to get away. To leave him. To let him die. Because shit, if they have to fail like this, why do they both have to be in the blast radius?

Instead, Sam’s trying to carry him. 

It works for a little while, but all the blood that’s not coming out of him is pooling up inside of him. Dean knows what dying feels like. He’s done it plenty of times. So he knows that if he’s going to say anything, it’s got to be now because this time maybe there’s not going to be another chance.

“Sam. Hold up. Hold up.”

Dean slumps against something hard, barely feels it, wishes Sam would just let him slip to the ground but knows his brother wouldn’t because there’d be no getting him back up again. 

“I gotta say something to you.”

“What?”

“I’m proud of us.”

It’s enough. Oh god, please let it be enough. He’s done all he could and it’s got to finally be enough. 

And that’s it. He’s done.

* * *

No angel comes for him in the dark. Not even Cas.

* * *

There are no thoughts. Maybe sense impressions.

The a familiar car and the hum of the road. A brother weeping, too broken to scream at Heaven or Hell just yet. A musty home beneath the earth. A lonely bed.

Cold.

A shadow speaking, kind as serpents, laying a trail of blood through the darkness.

The words force their way into his ears. Stink of sulfur up his nose next to match them. Taste of blood rotting in his mouth. His own weight on the mattress. 

Eyes opened for the first time, black and sharp as volcanic glass.

He is Perfected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 51stCenturyFox deserves a goddamn medal for dealing with me and my big weepy tears on this one. I apparently "wuv hugs." Who knew?
> 
> Obviously there's a lot of 9x23 material in here. That's not mine. I'm just interpreting it. Credit to the actual writers, yeah?
> 
> Title from Slade's "Do You Believe in Miracles." If the term "bloody minded" isn't in your lexicon, [take a minute to familiarize yourself](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bloody-minded) and be delighted with the SPN writing team for choosing quite possibly the most amazing song in the world for the S9 finale's title. I just want to send those dicks a pie.


	18. Coda

**Sam**

_“But I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time  
And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home.”_

When the first summoning doesn’t work, Sam brings out the big guns. He works late into the night, tries every sigil and configuration and sacrifice he can. He sheds his own blood.

He never offers himself up. Not quite. Not because he wouldn’t give anything, but because he knows all it’s going to do is make things worse, and worse will kill him. 

It must be close to sunup when he gives in, kicks over the bowls and braziers and storms back up through the library to the dormitories. 

Dean’s door is open.

“Dean?” he croaks, voice raw but still hopeful in spite of the insanity of it. His brother was dead. There was no doubting that in the warehouse, in the car, when he put the body here to rest a little while while in case he could find a way to fix this. 

Sam doesn’t care. He runs to the door, then stops short. Empty, all trace of his brother gone except for a couple of blood stains on the pillowcase. 

He turns, rushes down the hall. “Dean!” 

The washroom, the library, the kitchen, everything is empty. Still, he doesn’t accept that the Bunker is empty until he goes up the steps to the garage and finds the Impala is missing. 

He calls every phone number Dean has ever owned, frantic. He calls all of dad’s old numbers. He even calls all of his own numbers just in case he left one in the car and Dean is curious enough to answer. 

It occurs to him that maybe it’s not Dean doing this, that the body has been stolen, and the car with it. That maybe Metatron is just torturing him now, showing Sam just how much further down he can go. 

Sam goes back to the library and pours himself another drink. There’s nothing in this place that doesn’t remind him of Dean, and that ache in his chest doesn’t go away no matter how much whiskey he forces down. 

He finishes the glass. Finishes the bottle. Starts into another one without bothering with the glass.

 _Dad wouldn’t want you to drink yourself to death, Sammy._

It’s not really Dean. He knows that. He’s just talking to himself in his own head, some part of him that wants to live that knows what he needs to hear, and that he needs to hear it from his big brother. 

He staggers to the kitchen and gags himself over the sink until he’s puking up booze and stomach acid. He keeps heaving after that’s over, and as miserable as it is, he’s still pretty numb. He turns on the faucet and watches the mess swirl down the sink until the water runs clear on the porcelain. 

_Get a glass of water. Drink it down. When you’re done, drink another one. You’re not going to want it, Sammy, but it’ll help._

Sam nods, finds a glass. Fills it up and chokes it down. Does it again. Thinks about another one, but his stomach lurches a little and he doesn’t want to push it. 

_Go to bed, Sammy. I promise you, there’s nothing to fix now that can’t wait until morning._

He listens to his big brother. 

Sam falls into bed and passes out.

**Castiel**

_“Wait 'til you’re announced_  
We’ve not yet lost all our graces  
The hounds will stay in chains  
Look upon Your Greatness and she'll send the call out” 

Even with the gates reopened, Dean does not arrive in Heaven as Castiel expects. 

Hannah has been very kind to him, letting him do the work he can despite his failing grace. The other angels do not understand the dignity in this -- they have never been homeless, working odd hours at a Gas-N-Sip -- but it is good to be useful. Being in Heaven slows the degeneration of his grace as well. 

It’s possible that Castiel missed Dean’s arrival. Some of the souls who streamed in from the Veil were broken and needed significant attention, and there are literally millions of them. Castiel holds out hope and searches when he has time. He asks other angels and bears their odd looks and whispers with as little ego as he can. 

But then Hannah gives him the news that she has been looking as well, and that there is no sign of him. 

Castiel does not like the implications. 

He remembers Cain as a boy. Tall and strong, though not quite as tall as his brother, and protective to a fault. He was a child who had loved fiercely in that hard world outside the Garden. 

Of all of them, Cain’s heart was always the biggest, and the fastest to be broken. 

He was a lot like Dean. It follows, of course. That was the point of Heaven bringing John and Mary Winchester together. Michael and Lucifer needed the strongest possible scions of the lines of Cain and Abel. 

Sam and Dean had surpassed all expectations.

Castiel draws up the courage to ask. “Is he...do we know if Hell has him?”

Hannah shakes her head. “We found no new trace of him in the Veil.”

“Sam Winchester should be told.” It is not the answer to the prayers he hears from Sam, but it’s an answer, and Sam is owed that much. It has been three days. This is too long a silence.

“I can send Benjamin. Sam will recognize him.”

He shakes his head. “It should be me. Sam should hear this from me.”

“Castiel, your grace. If you go--”

Castiel says and raises a hand. “I was his friend. I...loved him. And if Dean isn’t here or in Hell, Sam is in danger because Dean died bearing the Mark of Cain.”

Hannah’s eyes go wide. She presses her lips together tight. “You’ll need a full garrison.”

“No,” he says, and shakes his head. “All I need is eyes on the ground and enough time to do what must be done.”

**Dean**

_“Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.  
What did you dream? It's alright we told you what to dream.”_

He lives for the kill. The hunt. The rush. There are other pleasures -- this new life has its perks, so to speak -- but give him the blade and something that needs to die and he’ll end it. 

Crowley doesn’t understand that. Crowley likes to ascribe motives to everything, like Dean needs a reason to enjoy destruction. Crowley thinks Dean’s a pet, stupid and subservient and content to to what he’s told.

Crowley is weak. He’s soft. And lately, Dean’s been thinking about that, and how much more efficient Hell could be if it wasn’t run by some almost-human junkie salesman who likes to hear himself talk too much.

Sure, he’s rooting out the resistance on Crowley’s behalf, gutting the last few pockets of Abaddon’s loyalists and half a dozen useless upstarts, but what Crowley doesn’t get about this is that it’s Dean’s might that’s keeping him in power. It’s a campaign within a campaign. Dean’s going off to war, but he’s coming back in charge. 

If he puts Crowley on top and then takes Crowley out, who’s going to challenge him? 

There are no more knights, and there’s only one thing in Heaven, Hell, and Earth that can kill him: the union of the Mark and the blade.

Dean Winchester, King of Hell. It’s got a nice ring to it.

That’s the horizon. Tonight, he’s got his eyes on the hunt. He’s hearing weird rumors about something going down in Austin. Some little breakaway group that has a problem with the way things are going now that Crowley’s back. Nothing solid, but here he is in Texas, checking in on things just to be sure. 

It’s kind of like his old job in a way. Get an inkling, check it out, put down whatever needs putting down. The difference is the full creative freedom. No guilt, no conscience, no rules except that Crowley rules. Aside from that, Dean does what he likes, goes where he wants, takes what looks good. 

It’s basically impossible to fuck up. Not that he’s really got the wiring to give a shit about that if he did -- what’s Crowley going to do, try and spank him? -- but if he did he’d just move on to the next thing. 

He hears the scrape of a shoe on pavement behind him as he enters the alley. He pretends to be oblivious, hums an odd scrap of half-remembered music. He only turns when the footsteps stop, dead center in the alley, far enough in to make fleeing difficult. 

“Castiel,” Dean says and tilts his head to the side. Things, people, angels look different. He recognizes the human vessel. The shattered angel guttering out inside of it is new. “I figured you’d be dead by now.”

“Not yet.”

“But soon, right?” He steps in close. Even if Cas was full-on angelic right now, Dean would have no reason to be afraid of him. “You’re basically human. I’m guessing you’ve got a couple of days left, max. Is that why you’re here? Looking for a goodbye kiss?” 

Dean licks his lips and closes the gap between them. His thumb snakes in under the front of Cas’ belt as he leans in to whisper, “Or would you rather cut me off a piece of that angel cake and go out with a bang? You know I’m able, and you wouldn’t believe some of the things I can do now. For example--”

Dean gestures lazily with his free hand and Sam crashes into the wall hard. A blood-filled syringe drops from his hand. 

“- I can kinda throw my little brother around like a rag doll now. Nice of you to bring him by. I’m curious, though. Was it so he could stab me with that needle, or were you gunning to be the meat in a Winchester sandwich? Because I think I know which one I’d enjoy more.” He turns to look at Sam and grins. “What do you think, Sammy? I’m up for it if you are.”

Dean clasps his fist and Cas makes a sound, almost like he’s choking. Probably because of the sudden pressure on his vessel’s heart and lungs. He doesn’t let up until the syringe in Castiel’s hand clatters to the ground. 

“Wow. Double penetration? You’ve been holding out on me, Cas.” Dean crushes the syringe under his boot into sparkly, ruby pieces and nips at Castiel’s neck. He bites just a little harder than necessary. 

Cas lets out a moan and tilts his head up toward Dean’s. Like he wants to be kissed.

Ah, why the hell not. There’s blood in the air, and nothing says he can’t have a little treat before he kills his little brother. Cas, though, he’ll keep. He’s never seen an angel burn out on its own before. 

He presses his lips to Castiel’s and teases them apart with his tongue. Cas’ mouth is pleasantly familiar in a distant sort of way. Fucking him will probably be the same way. Like riding a bike. 

Yeah, Dean likes this plan a lot. 

The bite of the needle in his leg makes him flinch and jerk away. Below him, Sam spits out a plastic guard. 

_Motherfucker._

Dean reaches down and grabs Sam by the jacket collar and lifts him about two feet off the ground. “I’m gonna bash your face in for that, you little shit,” he spits.

That distraction gives Castiel the opening he needs to jab a syringe into Dean’s shoulder. 

“Fuck.” 

He drops Sam and scrambles down the alley. His head is spinning. He needs to get away before they can give him any more blood than they already have. 

_Don’t make me go back._

It’s like a drug, though, human blood. It slows down his limbs and makes him clumsy. He stumbles when the first pair of angels appears, blocking his path. Real angels. So bright they almost hurt. 

_I can’t do this again._

He gets back to his feet, turns back like he’s going to barrel past Sam and Cas except his feet won’t move. 

He looks at the Devil’s trap beneath his feet, painted in a gray that almost matches the pavement. Almost. “No. No, damn it, no!” 

One of the angels jabs him in the neck with another syringe and he drops to his knees. 

_I was free, you sons of bitches. I was finally free._

He tries to stand, fumbles. He can feel tears pricking at his eyes. “Stop it,” he slurs, too high on the blood to fight. “I can...I can give you Crowley. I’ll be your attack dog. Anything you want. Just stop it, please. Let me go.”

Castiel kneels down in front of Dean, yet another syringe in his hand. 

“Save me, Cas. Please.”

Dean slumps into his angel’s arms as Castiel jams the needle home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Business first:  
> \- Gigantic thank-yous to 51stCenturyFox. I don't know if she realized what she was getting into when she said yes to my beta request. My gratitude is very probably endless.  
> \- The title, Coda, is both sort of what this is to the main story and S9, but also the title of Led Zeppelin's final album, released after the death of John Bonham.  
> \- Lyrics at the beginning of each section come from "Can't Find My Way Home" by Blind Faith, "Team" by Lorde, and "Welcome to the Machine" by Pink Floyd.
> 
> Writing this was harrowing. The Mark of Cain is a heavy thing; heavy enough to drown out Dean's other damage and turn it into what we get by the end. Carrying it was an experience that showed me some interesting things. Letting go of it for a while is a welcome development. 
> 
> I think there's more story in this 'verse. I don't know how much of it I'll write. The ending -- the real ending -- is never certain, but I think I've got an inkling of those next steps: blood-junkie demon!Dean, Cas' fading grace, Sam struggling to find solutions because he's truly a Man of Letters. If there's one thing we've learned from SPN, it's that the road is long, and every resolution is a door to a new apocalypse. 
> 
> There's a lot to fix where I've left it, and I've left it open for the fixing: by me, by you, by anyone. That's what this is about, right? Telling each other stories.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
